


Let The Shadows Fall Behind You

by ErinPtah



Series: Republic of Heaven Community Radio [7]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Caretaking, Childhood Trauma, Daemon Separation, Daemons, Depression, Emotional Eating, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-09 08:06:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4340636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinPtah/pseuds/ErinPtah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...okay, who wants futurefic from the <a href="http://ptahrrific.dreamwidth.org/205307.html#contents">His Dark Materials AU</a>?</p><p>It's a few years after the Republic of Heaven took out the Smiling God, and teenage Janice is approaching her separation ordeal. Her uncle Cecil is fine with that! Absolutely fine! Or at least, he's coping. He is doing an excellent job of coping.</p><p>Until he isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Cold Wind

**Author's Note:**

> Author is burned out on writing canon-based depressed!Cecil, decided to write some in an AU instead. This isn't another novel...but it's snowballed into a lot more than the one-shot it was originally planned to be.
> 
> Finnish help courtesy of Mari. Spanish translations courtesy of [Nightvalespanol](http://nightvalespanol.tumblr.com/episodios).
> 
> So here's what you missed ~~on Glee~~ since the last fic installment of Republic of Heaven Community Radio:
> 
> The official soundtrack! Welcome To The New Age: [tracklist & lyrics on Dreamwidth](http://ptahrrific.dreamwidth.org/241328.html) / [favorite on 8tracks](http://8tracks.com/erinptah/welcome-to-the-new-age?utm_campaign=tumblr_button&utm_source=tumblr.com&utm_medium=referral) / [reblog on Tumblr](http://bicatperson.tumblr.com/post/123383843181/newage).
> 
> Some comics! [Frank and Sadie Doyle](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/The-Amber-Martini-Glass-538817591) getting involved in the war; [Cecil and Emmanuel having a scuffle](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Brotherly-Rivalry-Spoilers-536223931) afterward.
> 
> Guest art! [Kevin holding his daemon](http://birbcoop.tumblr.com/post/119157931702/requests-v-thethespacecoyote-strexcorpsguardian) by birbcoop; [Emmanuel cosplay!](http://whatwhatwotter.tumblr.com/post/120141658449/mcm-photoset-3-3-the-literal-gpoy-edition-i) by whatwhatwotter.
> 
> And now, without further ado...Night Vale, Lyra's World, 2018.

Carlos is riding high, both figuratively and literally, as his chauffeur brings the vehicle in sight of Night Vale.

Figuratively, because he just had a great day at work. Some high-profile virology results finally came in, and not only does one of their ally worlds recognize the new mutated strain that's been wreaking havoc on the east coast of New Denmark, they've had an effective treatment for decades. The recipe is now in the hands of three different pharmaceutical companies for local testing.

Literally, because his vehicle is a gyropter.

When he started this job, he commuted in a car, then a design for high-efficiency solar cells hit the mass market and fuel efficiency was no longer a problem. Maybe if he worked somewhere with less sunshine, it still wouldn't be practical...but Carlos's gyropter spends all day parked on a rooftop in Desert Bluffs.

The chauffeur begins their final descent, until at last they settle onto the rooftop of Carlos's home.

(It was so _prescient_ of Cecil to insist that the blueprints had room for a gyropad.)

Carlos shoulders his backpack, armadillo daemon riding in the largest pocket, and heads for the stairwell while his driver (with her cactus-wren daemon) takes the fire escape. The attic and the stairs aren't air-conditioned, so it's a blissful change when he steps out into the TV room, where the air is cool and the shades are down and Cecil is lounging on the couch with his laptop on his knees.

"Hi, sweetie." Carlos drops Isaña to the carpet and leans over the back of the couch to press a kiss to Cecil's temple. He glances at the screen: it's the vacation essay. "How's the writing going?"

The first vacation they ever took together was a last-minute thing, a daring escape from town to keep Cecil from being punished for the subversive content he'd snuck on-air right under Strexcorp's noses. NVCR's current management is significantly less evil, and it's not that Carlos doesn't appreciate that...but the requirements for time off are a lot more labyrinthine, involving an exactly-2500-word description of what you plan to do while you're away.

"Um...pretty well, I think," says Cecil. Khoshekh isn't around, and without his daemon Cecil can't actually see what's on the screen, so he presses a series of keys to get the word count.

"One hundred fifty-eight words," reports the ordinater.

Cecil's brow furrows. "Oh. I...I thought I had more than that."

"Well, you have plenty of time," says Isaña from the floor by their feet. Sure, the approval process takes a while. Two years ago Cecil started in October and didn't manage to get time off for Christmas. (Carlos ended up traveling on his own. His parents aren't getting any younger; family visits are too precious to skip.) But they're trying to plan this vacation around a physics conference Carlos is attending in Oslo this August, and it's only the middle of February.

"Mmhmm."

"I can handle dinner while you keep working," adds Carlos. "Unless you've started something already?"

"Nope." Guilt settles across Cecil's face. "I may not be that hungry. I may have finished all the leftover cupcakes from Janice's birthday party."

"You didn't even leave me one?" When Cecil doesn't answer, Carlos tsks. "Well, I guess I'm making you salad."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

A month after Janice's fourteenth birthday, they have to have another party, because her daemon settles. Carlos finds out when he's checking Facebook on his lunch break, and Janice, Steve, and Emmanuel have all posted excited updates, complete with photos.

Tehom is a sleek black dragonet, the size of an eagle, with the pointy frill of a girdled lizard and the soft-skinned wings of a bat. He's much too small for Janice to ride, but over the past couple of years she's spent more and more time riding a cloud-pine branch everywhere, so it's not going to hold her back.

Carlos, bursting with pride, +likes all the photos. He doesn't share any of them, but only because Janice's mother was leery of having her image on Facebook at all, let alone having it exposed to Carlos's un-vetted network. Carlos has no interest in upsetting the woman they all assume is currently the Sheriff.

Everyone in Cecil's network _has_ been vetted, so Carlos assumes Cecil is sharing the images like mad. If they're not showing up in Carlos's feed, it's probably some kind of Facebook anti-repeats filter.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

The crowded, exuberant settling party leads into a small and solemn after-party, involving Important Secret Witch Business. Cecil and Carlos offer up their yard for the purpose. The main party was at Steve and Delphine's duplex, but it would be rude to stay there for a gathering where Steve and Delphine themselves aren't invited.

Carlos takes a car to and from work that day. He's probably not going to make it home before the event starts, and he doesn't want to disrupt everyone's conversations by landing a gyropter practically on their heads.

Sure enough, when he gets there, his back yard is occupied with most of the Night Vale Harbor clan.

(Emmanuel wanted to call it the Lake Whatlake Thisisthemiddleofthedesert clan. Janice talked him out of it.)

Eight new adults have been added over the past three-and-a-half years. Carlos used his media infamy to tell the world that there was a new clan based in Night Vale actively seeking trans men, and the world responded. Not every guy who comes out of the woodwork to investigate has stayed — some can't get past the language barriers, others aren't willing to tolerate the desert heat — but six wizards, one of them accompanied by his sister and another by his wife, have decided they like it enough to move here permanently.

All of them are, naturally, stunningly beautiful. Before he greets anyone, Carlos makes a beeline for the refreshments table to get a glass of lemonade. Very icy, very cold lemonade.

Janice is in conversation with one of the wizards, a three-century-old exile from a Muscovite clan. She's taking Muscovy in school, and it sounds like they're using the opportunity to practice. Josie (not a member of Night Vale Harbor, but invited as a kind of ambassador for Lake Jeris) is talking to another in Spanish. And there's Emmanuel; when he spots Carlos, his daemon rises out of the grass in a buzzing black cloud and flies over to say hi.

"Hey, Neharah," says Carlos warmly. "What's it like so far, being the parent of a dragon?"

"Could not be prouder," hums Neharah. "We settled at thirteen, but Mamá and Cecil were both sixteen, so we were prepared for a wait...and then, wham, here they are! And Tehom's not a bird — do you know how rare that is for witches? We always knew our girl was special!"

Carlos doesn't deflate the fatherly gushing by asking if Neharah is trying to brag about their own non-bird status. "Where is your mother, anyway? And did Kevin make it? I know he was invited...."

Kevin — like Cecil — is treated as a kind of auxiliary clan member. It's a strain on tradition, letting non-witch relatives (and/or their genetic near-duplicates) get this close to Secret Witch Business...but the idea of male witches is itself a strain on tradition, so this group is willing to experiment. Carlos's presence is more of a strain, and usually too much to ask. He's getting a pass at this gathering because he already knows the Secret in question.

Also, because it's his house.

"Kevin sent his regards," says a subset of Neharah. "And Mamá...was asked not to come."

Carlos frowns over his lemonade. "Wait, why not? I mean, I guess it's none of my business. But why not?"

The answer comes from a smaller, quieter subset of flies. "...Personal reasons."

It strikes Carlos that there's more than one kind of Secret here. Everyone present knows about separation ordeals. Everyone but Carlos has been through one — or, in Janice's case, is due to go through one very soon. But only a handful of people know that Cecil's wasn't by choice. "You don't think — I mean, she wouldn't —"

"No! Of course she wouldn't try anything. There's no reason to. We even asked Dana to double-check the prophecy records to make sure." And if Mayor Cardinal can't find anything at her clearance level, there's probably nothing to find. Probably. "We just think it would be best if she gave this whole affair some distance."

"Makes sense." Carlos hesitates. He doesn't actually know whether Emmanuel and Neharah, too, had their separation forced on them. "I hope your separation was...okay. Or at least, that you're okay about it now. However it went."

"Ours went better than most," says Emmanuel himself, stepping into the conversation and clinking his glass against Carlos's. "Sometimes these things balance out."

He looks across the yard at his daughter. She's looking every inch the mature young adult, hair done up in an elaborate braid, black silk dress cut in a classical witch-style — with the skirt specially tailored so her small legs don't get lost in it. (Emmanuel's tunic is the same color, but the cut is consciously masculine. Carlos is just relieved he's through his "celebrate the fact that I'll be remembered no matter what I wear by borrowing the most outlandish things from my brother's wardrobe" phase.)

"Listen, Carlos...I really can't thank you enough for helping all these people find us. I've talked to Janice about my separation, and made sure she was present for Kevin's, but those were both unusual cases, and hers is going to be so much more...traditional. She needed some traditional people to talk to."

"It was nothing," stammers Carlos, embarrassed but pleased. "Hey, speaking of unusual cases...Cecil is _here_ , right?"

His brother-in-law frowns, gaze darting around the rest of the crowd. "Of course. He must've gone to the bathroom or something...he was out here just a minute ago, I thought."

Carlos has been home longer than a minute. "I'll go check on him."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Cecil is at the kitchen island, head rested on his folded arms, laptop and Khoshekh both on the countertop. An oscillating fan stands sentry on the counter, ruffling Khoshekh's fur in waves as the breeze passes over him.

"Hey, babe," says Carlos, letting a hand rest on Cecil's shoulder. "You feeling all right?"

"Oh! — yes. Yes, I'm fine. Hi," stammers Cecil. "It was just...it was getting a little hot out there. Thought I'd go inside. Get some work done."

Carlos glances at the screen. Cecil's vacation essay is open, but he can't have made much progress. The toolbar across the bottom of the window announces that it has 327 words.

He looks to the far right and blinks twice, which signals his bionic eyes to display the menu. The settings appear in his visual feed like a hologram hovering in midair. Some of them he almost never uses, but others he can switch between by rote; flipping over to infrared view with a numerical overlay is a reflex that takes half a second.

"Is everything okay outside?" adds Cecil. He and the laptop are now glowing red figures in a room of mostly greens and yellows. According to the readings, he's not feverish. "Does the table need more drinks, or anything...?"

"Nah. I just got lemonade, there's plenty." Carlos double-blinks while looking left, which flips him back to the default view (human-visible spectrum, no zoom), then focuses normally and smiles. "I'll keep an eye on it, okay? You go ahead and focus on writing."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

The pattern is obvious eventually, when Carlos looks back on it, but he doesn't notice anything special about the moments as they're happening.

One movie night they get halfway through _Cat Ballou_ without Cecil laughing once. But any movie is going to get old once you've watched it a couple hundred times, right?

Carlos asks if he wants to put something else on. They end up trying the first episode of _Magical Dust Warrior Lyra-chan_ — a Nipponese anime _very_ loosely inspired by Lyra Belacqua's childhood, in which one of the characters is an unsubtle expy of Carlos — and they both get a kick out of it. When Cecil coos about how well the animators captured Carlos's glorious hair, he's as effusive as he's ever been.

(Carlos thought the sparkles were overkill, but there's no accounting for taste.)

.

.

One Thursday afternoon Josie calls Carlos's phone, concerned. She's been trying to call Cecil to ask about league night for days, and he hasn't responded. Is he okay?

Carlos promises to investigate, dials Cecil, gets voicemail, and is officially nervous enough to drive down to the station. He finds Cecil in the office, totally fine and preparing for the night's show, full of stammered apologies for having worried everyone. He's forgotten to check his phone for a while, that's all.

Which could happen to anyone. Carlos calls Josie to pass on the news that Cecil is fine, just kinda swamped right now, and isn't going to make it to bowling tonight. He's got this essay he wants to work on.

.

.

One weekend morning Carlos is making breakfast, trying a new vegan omelette recipe, when Cecil wanders in with stubble and mussed hair and wrinkled clothes. The same clothes he was wearing yesterday, Carlos realizes. "Hey, did you sleep in those?"

Cecil blinks sleepily at him. "...yes? Don't you remember? You were there."

"It's just...you don't usually do that. Do you?" Carlos tries to think back over the past few weeks, but it's not like he was taking inventory. Every average night with Cecil flows together in his memory; he isn't going to remember specific outfits unless he was involved in taking them off. And he hasn't done that in...huh. Some time.

"I once wore the same outfit for two and a half years straight, waking and sleeping," points out Cecil. "This one's gonna survive being slept in for a night."

Carlos can't argue with that. And it's not like _he_ never sleeps in his clothes. (Cecil does change into a horrendous fresh outfit for work — it involves toe socks and Silly Bands and a skirt with an ugly crocheted hem that looks like it's had holes ripped in it — and that evening, Carlos takes great pleasure in throwing each piece across the bedroom.)

.

.

Once in a while he catches Cecil staring at the wall, or gazing blankly into his coffee, or otherwise unfocused and unmoving. But Cecil always shrugs it off and seems okay, if tired, once Carlos gets his attention.

"I'm thinking," he protests, when Carlos asks if he's okay. "Thinking is an important part of being a scientist."

Carlos raises his eyebrows. "And you're a scientist?"

"I'm a scientist's husband," says Cecil primly. "Which basically makes me a scientist too."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Carlos's job runs on an unconventional holiday schedule. He's relaxing at home, enjoying a day off guided by a religion that doesn't exist in his universe, when Tehom taps a claw on the living room window.

Cecil, whose work day hasn't started yet, lets the dragonet daemon in. "Janice! Is something wrong? Shouldn't you be in...school...?"

Tehom, alone, grins a sharp-fanged grin. "Janice _is_ in school."

It's a few days after the ordeal, Carlos knows, though he was not invited and Cecil chose not to go. Janice's daemon doesn't look traumatized, or in need of separation-sufferers-only bonding time, so Carlos decides there's no need to slip politely out of the room. "Congratulations! We're so proud of you."

"How are you feeling?" adds Cecil, with more concern than pride. "Are you okay?"

"I am!" Tehom flaps into the air and perches on the back of a couch: the one covered with a heavy-duty throw, specifically to defend it against clawed daemons. "In some ways it was worse than I thought it would be...."

Cecil makes a noise too small for Carlos to interpret.

"...but in other ways, it was easier!" He tilts his head, the same way Janice does, the same way Emmanuel does. "At first, when she —"

"I do not mean to interrupt," interrupts Cecil, "and of course I always enjoy your company, it's just — I've been working on something, that's important and a bit time-sensitive. If you are hurt I will stop and help, but if you're all right — that is, if there's no emergency — I really do need to get back to that."

"Oh," says Tehom. "Is it something I could maybe help with? Because I can do that now. During a school day. While I'm also attending school."

"It isn't. It's an essay. You know how essays are, right? Gotta write 'em yourself."

His niece's daemon nods, understanding. "Oh, okay. I'll go see Papi. Good luck with the writing!"

Once they're alone again, Carlos says, "Honey, what's going on? You weren't working on the essay."

"Well, I should be," mutters Cecil.

Carlos sighs. "You probably should, yeah. Are you still having that writer's block? Can _I_ help out at all?"

"You're not allowed to write it for me," says Cecil unhappily.

"Sure, okay, but can I edit? Once you have something written, can I go over it and suggest more scientific ways to phrase things? I bet that would double your word count, easy."

"Um...I think that would be acceptable. Since it's a vacation _with_ you, you're an admissible editor." Cecil bites his lip. "How about if I give it to you when I have a thousand words? Does that sound good?"

"How many do you have now?"

" _Very nearly_ five hundred."

Carlos does a double-take. That's it? That's it from _Cecil_ , who can improvise a flowery, philosophical monologue at the drop of a hat? Wow, he really must be blocked. "And you don't want me to just look at it now?"

"I really would rather you not."

It's weird, and a little unnerving, but they do still have a healthy buffer of lead time here. Reluctantly, Carlos lets it go.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

They're both trapped at work for the evening — Carlos stranded in Desert Bluffs by the travel advisory, Cecil holed up in the station while some kind of hellish glass-and-shadow hurricane batters the walls — when Cecil freezes up on-air.

The weather can't be good for anyone's peace of mind. It isn't good for Carlos's, and Carlos is in a Desert Bluffs hotel room with an idyllic starry sky outside the windows, just hearing about it on the radio. Especially when Cecil starts narrating the presence of some kind of monstrous shambling figure in the hall. Which Carlos would assume is just Station Management, until Cecil describes mysterious bubbling lights, and the noise of slurping rather than screeching....

He stops, and, with trembling voice, launches into a recitation: "Hazelnut. Mystify. Cuttlefish. Lark. Lurk. Robert...."

He stops again.

"Anglican," whispers Carlos. He and Isaña are frozen, staring at the broadcast app on their phone screen. "Anglican. Come on, honey, you know this...."

The slurping gets so loud, Cecil's microphone picks it up over the sound of his own panicked breathing.

Carlos is already dialing when the audio cuts to the weather report.

"Sweet Carlos," chokes Cecil in his ear a few seconds later. "I love you so much. I'm so —"

" _¡Avellana, mistificar, jibia, alondra, acecho, Robert, Anglicana, feromona, camiseta sin mangas, mermelada, hardware, láser, pimienta, liberación, rótula, falafel, período, persecución, casto, leggings, lana, suéter, latido del corazón, latido del corazón, latido, del corazón, latido, del corazón, latido, latido, latido, latido!_ " yells Carlos over the muffled racket. (Cecil is probably hiding under his desk.)

There's a startled silence, then Cecil croaks, "Did you...sing that?"

"Setting words to music is scientifically proven to increase mnemonic retention! Did you get all that? Or do you need it again?"

"I — I'd been thanking the mysterious lights you weren't here, I didn't even think you'd remember —"

"I heard you say it was important, so I remembered," says Carlos impatiently. "Cecil, babe, focus. Say it with me. Hazelnut."

"H-hazelnut."

"Mystify."

"Mystify...."

He can't hear the bubbling shamble any more by the time they get to _falafel_ , and Cecil is sob-gasping in the cadence that means relief when they hit the first _beat_ , and then it's over.

It's over.

Well, there's still a state of emergency in effect outdoors, and the weather report is going to need to run all night. Carlos stays on the phone until Cecil retreats into the underground bunker for the night, where the signal can't reach. It's only after hanging up that he realizes his eyes are sore: he forgot to put his afternoon eyedrops in.

Eyedrops, shower, hotel pajamas, exhausted collapse onto the pillows with Isaña under his arm. It's been a while since they had a scare like that — either him and Cecil, or Night Vale in general. The town may not be _safe_ in their lifetimes, but science has taken incredible strides toward making it _safer_. Just two months ago they celebrated the first Valentine's Day in living memory with no fatalities.

"Well, no prizes for guessing what the nightmares are gonna be about tonight," murmurs Isaña.

Carlos gives her an extra cuddle. "Anyone can freeze. That's what you have support systems for. That's what Cecil has _us_ for. And if I hadn't gotten through, Manny would have. Or Josie. Or Steve, or Delphine...or, even if human error had hit us all at the same time, Fey would've stepped in."

They have safety nets. Plenty of them.

And anyone can freeze.

Carlos is already half-asleep when it drifts across his mind that, in Night Vale, people who _do_ freeze don't live past forty.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

And no matter how much heart-stopping terror Night Vale still has up its sleeves, Carlos can never stay in a bad mood for long, because his job is _amazing_.

When people joke about the biggest medical discovery possible, it's the cure for cancer, right? Which is kind of misleading, because there's a whole spectrum of different kinds of cancer with a wide variety of causes, both environmental and genetic. Carlos's work has not brought his universe _the_ cure for cancer. Just effective treatments for eliminating four separate _types_ of cancer...with three more in testing stages.

The Interdimensional Science Foundation keeps a careful balance between making some things open-source and turning others into profit. Carlos and this dimension's board of directors hold a stable of patents, parceling out the testing and management to whichever companies Fey calculates are least evil.

Having obscene amounts of money is exactly as fun as Carlos always imagined it would be. For the first time in his life, he's enjoying grant applications — because he doesn't have to write them, he's the one who gets to make the writers' dreams come true.

Plenty of fields can't have the answers imported from other worlds, but find other kinds of value in the connections. In late April, Desert Bluffs hosts the local wing of a massive cross-worldly history convention. Carlos spends his lunches at the nearest bar, and gets a couple of classicists spending a whole hour explaining the empire-toppling effects of one world's climate being comparatively more hospitable to olive trees in Greece in 500 BC. (He doesn't really _follow_ the explanation, because he's a physicist, not a historian, but their excitement is familiar and contagious.)

And, oh, the social change. The unanticipated, beautiful social change.

Some things don't translate. There's a lot of "sure, _your_ universe might have had a problem with racism and police brutality, that doesn't mean the cops aren't objective in _my_ version of this country." But it's hard to stick to a belief like "women can't be good presidents" when you're collaborating with an otherworldly scientist whose country has had eight of them in a row. And who just gave you, let's say, one of those cures for cancer.

Most relevant to Carlos's life (the anti-discrimination bills are wonderful for countless people, but he's the director of an independent institution, he's not in any personal danger of being fired) is that four states in Hispania Nova voted to de-gender marriage in referendums in 2016.

The population of Night Vale, many of whom seemed surprised that this wasn't the law already, turned out in droves to vote. True, they cast their votes by waving at the sky and shrieking, which Carlos is pretty sure did not make it into the official tally...but there was enough support in the rest of the state that the motion went through either way. And of course there were rings waiting in both his and Cecil's pockets as they watched the results come in.

Carlos still gets his fair share of hatemail and death threats, but these days he has people to screen them.

He comes home every week with a new fascinating discovery — say, "we just compared notes with the astronomers in Charles Raimeaux's world, and it turns out our respective galaxies are _completely different shapes!_ " — and Cecil listens, and nods, and generally laughs or gasps or prompts him for more at all the right points.

Is it a problem, then, if there are other points when he's melancholy and distracted? If it's been a while since he made it to league night, or a local theater production, or one of Janice's recitals? Not everyone can be happy and energetic all the time. He'll get back on an upswing eventually.

In the meantime, Carlos keeps trying to share the things that make _him_ joyful, and only occasionally complains that it always seems left to him to fold laundry or empty the dishwasher these days.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

They're having Kevin over for dinner. Carlos has rice on the stove, deviled eggs in the fridge. Now he's just waiting on Cecil, who promised to swing by the Raúl's and pick up a few more ingredients on the way home from work.

At last Cecil arrives, carrying a canvas shopping bag like it's a ball-and-chain. "Ugh, don't even _ask_ about the lines at the store," he groans, setting it on the island with a thump. "Do you have this under control? Is it okay if I lie down for a bit before Kevin gets here?"

"Sure, it's nothing too...."

Carlos pulls a chilled box from the top of the bag...and winces. Hamburger patties. The real thing, not the vegetarian substitute. Kevin has made a lot of progress in coping with his more horrifying Strexcorp-related memories — for instance, these days he can be around other people eating meat without getting violently ill from the smell — but Carlos would rather not put him through it at all. And eating it himself is still out of the question.

"Did you get the vegetarian ones?" he asks, pawing through the rest of the bag. "No? No. Great."

He sticks the meat ones in the freezer — he and Cecil can still eat them, some other time — but, ugh.

"Do you think you have time to go back? I don't have any good backup plans, and I...."

He turns back to the island — and stops short.

Big silent tears are running down Cecil's cheeks.

"Cecil, hon," breathes Carlos, annoyance wiped out in a rush of concern. "Are you hurt? Did something happen at work? What's wrong?"

"I — 'msorry, I didn't —"

Cecil's voice catches, lip wobbling. Carlos takes a step closer, heart in his mouth, daemon close at his heels.

"I know, I _know_ he can't eat that, I just forgot — I didn't _think_ — and the lines were so _long_ and now it's too late, stupid, _stupid_ Cecil —"

"Sweetheart, come here." Carlos pulls Cecil into his arms — and Cecil collapses against him and _bawls_ into his shoulder, like a child who's just skinned their knee for the first time and doesn't understand why the world suddenly hurts. "If I'd known it would upset you like this — this is nothing we can't deal with, I swear. Cecil, listen to me. We can handle this."

He holds Cecil through the sobs, while Isaña runs to the edge of their range and checks the adjoining rooms, looking for Cecil's daemon. Cecil clings to Carlos, rudderless. Khoshekh doesn't show.

Carlos isn't watching the clock. Or rather, given that the clock is never accurate anyway, he isn't watching the rice.

Eventually he starts to smell it.

Cecil's storm of tears has quieted to these desperate little hiccups, so, okay, priority one is to get him out of here before he realizes he's made Carlos burn the rice and has a whole new guilt-stricken meltdown. Carlos shifts his grip and guides his husband away: through the dining room, down the hall, one step at a time, murmuring reassurances all the way. Once they reach the master bedroom, he guides Cecil into sitting on the mattress and cups Cecil's face firmly in his hands.

"You were right at first. You're tired, and you need to lie down," he says, using all his Executive Director authority. "I'm gonna grab you some comfortable PJs, and you're going to change into those and stay in bed for a while, okay? I'll take care of dinner. All I need you to do is get yourself some rest. You understand?"

Eyes red and face streaked with tears, Cecil sniffles, but nods.

"Okay." Carlos dares to let him go, and Cecil sits in place on his own, accepting the soft panserbjørne pajamas when Carlos presses them into his hands. "Tell me what you're going to do?"

"Put these on and rest and trust you," says Cecil wetly.

"That's right." Carlos presses a kiss to each of his temples. "I love you very much. It's going to be okay."

Then he's back to the kitchen as fast as sock feet on a hardwood floor will safely carry him, stopping only long enough to disable the smoke detectors along the way.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Obviously this dinner was not meant to be. Standing on the front lawn — hopefully Cecil will interpret his leaving as a last-minute grocery run, so Carlos can ease him into the news of the cancellation later — he calls up Kevin. "Listen, I'm really sorry to do this, but we have to back out of tonight. Cecil's not feeling well."

"He's not?" echoes Kevin. "Oh, gosh. Tell him I hope he feels better."

"I'll pass it on."

"Did you have a rain date in mind, or should I not worry about saving this pie?"

Carlos considers saying that he has no idea when Cecil will be better, because he doesn't understand what's wrong. Considers opening up to Kevin about how startling this has been, and asking if the man has any advice. Not that Kevin is the first person he calls on for help in difficult times, or vice versa...but the two of them have a special connection. They form this world's only support group for survivors of the Smiling God shining directly into your head, offering you everything you ever wanted while burning your eyes out of their sockets.

Then Carlos considers how, in spite of the identical faces, Kevin and Cecil have different minds and different feelings. (He's seen the brain scans to prove it. Courtesy of Tatiana the neurologist, Night Vale research team, fall 2014.) And how, even with the in-person secret-police observation at reduced levels these days, the phones are still tapped.

"Help yourself to the pie," he says out loud. "Raise a toast to our health in our absence." And, for the benefit of their secret listeners: "That's metaphorical toast, not the kind that could raise any suspicion of wheat-smuggling."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

A good night's sleep leaves Cecil looking infinitely healthier. By the time Carlos rolls out of bed and puts in his morning eyedrops, his husband is clean-shaven, shower-fresh, and hammering away in the kitchen, while Khoshekh does the angry chant that will make sure the coffee comes out just the way they like it.

"I'm really sorry about last night," says Cecil as he pours them each a cup. (Carlos's mug reads I'M A PHYSICIST, WHAT'S YOUR SUPERPOWER. Cecil's has the more modest caption _My Husband Won A Nobel Prize And All I Got Was This Lousy Coffee Mug._ ) "I don't know what came over me. It wasn't even a big deal! Go back to the store, pick up some veggie burgers, bam, it's fixed. What kind of person can't handle that?"

"The kind who should see a doctor," says Carlos frankly.

Cecil breaks into a nervous laugh. "I think that's overreacting, don't you? It was one little transient case of one tiny, mundane task abruptly looming so large that life itself became too overwhelming to face without collapsing into helpless sobs. Hardly the worst thing I've ever been through. Did I tell you, there was one time on the Subway when I didn't move at all for what turned out to be almost five days? I'm over it now. You don't have to worry."

"I'll worry as much as I feel like," huffs Carlos, crossing his arms. "What if you have a serious vitamin deficiency? What if someone's putting a curse on you? If you don't make the appointment, I will. I'll pay extra for a house call if I have to."

"Sweet, oversensitive Carlos," sighs Cecil. "If it'll make you happy."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Teddy Williams does a couple of standard refreshing bloodstone chants, and prescribes vitamin-X supplements and this incense that smells like chocolate and sea salt.

Carlos debates backing out of the German conference he's scheduled to attend in early May. The programming schedule looks scientifically fascinating, and he's been looking forward to the chance to catch up with Keith Köhler (who's enjoying a quiet retirement in his home country, and doesn't plan on returning to Night Vale until he's ready to take a walk in the Whispering Forest). But if there's a chance Cecil might fall apart again while he's a fourteen-hour flight away....

"I am going to be fine," says Cecil firmly. "Now start packing or I'll start for you."

That's a credible threat. Cecil has come to understand Carlos's fashion sense well enough that he can sift through the clothes Carlos finds silly-but-charming, and pick out the ones that are embarrassing hideous. Carlos starts packing.

"You're sure you'll be okay," he says again on the day of his flight, as they're wheeling his luggage towards the bus stop.

"I am not so dependent that I can't survive a week without my husband," huffs Cecil, with a wounded air that's only half put-on. "It's not like you're going to disappear off the face of the earth. It's not like I don't know when I'll see you again. Your flight home lands at 5:45 on Saturday afternoon."

All this is true. On the other hand, Cecil has every right to be extra-sensitive where surprise abandonment is concerned. Cecil's mother and older brother _did_ disappear off the face of the earth when he was a teenager, and he spent decades not knowing when, or if, he would see them again. "And you're going to be okay if the plane is delayed."

"Yes, Carlos."

"Or if there's bad weather and it gets canceled."

"I assume you'd get a seat on the next one available." Cecil hesitates. "You _would_ , right?"

Carlos raises his eyebrows. "No, Cecil, I might get distracted by a very scientific Toblerone, and decide it would be best for both of us if I spent the next six months studying the duty-free shops without ever looking at the flight schedule. Yes, of course I'd get the next one."

"Well, there you go! I will be just fine." The bus appears a few blocks down, and Cecil rolls the suitcase into Carlos's grip. "Enjoy your trip. Do lots of science. Bring me back some lederhosen."


	2. Ten Feet Under and Upside Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos comes back from a conference overseas to find that Cecil is not okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-Clouded Mountain artwork:  
> \+ [The whole multi-world army](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/When-Can-I-See-You-Again-Spoilers-530424430), infinite-canvas style  
> \+ [Cecil and Carlos](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Matching-Armored-Bear-Pajamas-534229021) in matching PJs  
> \+ [Abigail Palmero](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/The-Woman-in-the-Short-Skirt-and-the-Long-Jacket-537966490) with her daughter  
> \+ [Tamika and Kevin](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Subtle-Knifebearer-Book-Club-Spoilers-535188536) with their daemons  
> \+ [chibi Isaña](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Chibi-Armadillo-537072621) (a [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/user.php?v=erinptah) reward)  
> \+ [POV character portraits](http://bicatperson.tumblr.com/post/123651585700/pov-character-portrait-compilation-from-the) compilation
> 
> haltijani vaalija = the one who cherishes your daemon enough to touch them the way you can.  
> erokärsimys = separation suffering  
> (kärsimys = suffering = the word Serafina Pekkala uses in the Finnish translation of HDM for a daemon-separation ordeal)

Carlos enjoys his trip.

He does a _ton_ of science. He touches base with international friends and colleagues. He lets a lot of people at the conference, and a few who notice him on the street, pull him aside to take selfies.

His German bodyguard only has to take out a single troublemaker, who wasn't even armed. And everyone who just wants to flirt with him is gracious enough to back off when turned down.

The time zone difference means there's no convenient hour to call Cecil, but he sometimes texts in the evening and finds a reply by morning. NVCR still doesn't do any kind of online streaming, so he resigns himself to missing the show for the week. He's asked both Dana and Emmanuel to keep an ear to the radio, and check in on Cecil if he gets overwhelmed during the broadcast, or, heaven forbid, somehow misses it altogether.

Back home, the show goes on. At the end of the conference, Carlos stuffs his luggage with souvenirs and business cards, and catches his trans-North-Oceanic flight exactly on schedule.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Cecil doesn't meet Carlos at the aerodock...which is a good sign, right? It means Cecil isn't so lonely or insecure that he can't bear waiting until they see each other at the house. Carlos sends a text to say he's on his way, and takes the bus.

It's past one in the morning by his jet-lagged internal clock, but it's a sunny summer evening here in Night Vale. The house is quiet, no lights on. Carlos and Isaña dodge the series of bony spikes that have sprouted in the front lawn (they have _got_ to buy some stronger weed killer) and let themselves in, yawning, hoping Cecil is out doing something fun.

He leaves his suitcases in the foyer and gets a glass of water in the kitchen. The counter is piled with dirty dishes and plastic takeout containers. Too much to load into the dishwasher now, so Carlos leaves the cup on a square of free space and heads for the bedroom.

Cecil's already in bed.

Not reading, or typing, or watching cat videos on his phone. Just sprawled there. His clothes (leather pants and a shirt trimmed with fake flowers) are wrinkled; he has greasy hair and stubble on his chin; a waft of stale air hits Carlos in the face as he steps in.

A horrible sinking feeling grips Carlos's chest as he hurries to the bedside. He doesn't see any blood — limbs and features all in the usual places — but — but. "Honey...? Are you hurt?"

"Oh..." says Cecil distantly. "Hi, Carlos. Welcome home."

Isaña breaks away to look for Khoshekh (no sign of him under the bed, or in his other favorite nooks and crannies) while Carlos switches to infrared vision, then switches back once he's sure Cecil doesn't have a fever. Which only rules out a tiny fraction of possible Night Vale ailments. "Cecil, talk to me. Do you feel any pain? How long have you been here?"

That gets more of a reaction from Cecil, in the form of sullenness. "I went to work. I have made it to work every day. I am a _professional_."

"Right, of course." Carlos squeezes Cecil's wrist, relieved. If he'd missed the broadcast, someone would have come to check on him.

But what about between broadcasts? Judging by Cecil's face, it's been at least a few days since he's shaved. And the clothes. The dishes.

"Besides that...have you gotten out of the house at all? How long have you been wearing this outfit? When was the last time you showered?"

After a long, aching pause, Cecil says, "...I have made it to work every day."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Carlos is more than just a brilliant researcher with pretty hair. He's an all-around fantastic coordinator. Science taught him to manage complicated multi-target workflows, and Night Vale trained him to stay on-the-ball no matter how bad things get.

He opens the windows and switches on a fan, so Cecil will get some fresh air and a cool breeze while Carlos retreats to the kitchen to set some other wheels in motion. Puts on instant coffee for himself, so he doesn't crash in the middle of this. Finds Cecil's vitamins, and searches the fridge for something more substantial than caffeine to wash them down. (Soda isn't wholesome enough, the milk's expired — okay, mango juice, that'll do.)

And he makes a call while the coffee brews. "Hi, Emmanuel. Can I ask you something?"

"Sagittarius," quips his brother-in-law.

Carlos groans. That used to be funny...back when he couldn't remember how many times he'd heard it before. "Will you get some new material, already?"

"All right, geez. What is it?"

"I need someone to pick up Khoshekh. He's at the station — you know his spot, the men's room by the sink."

That catches Emmanuel off-guard. Khoshekh is more than capable of traveling on his own, and they both know it. "Everything okay? You're not in danger, are you? We're having an impromptu archery tournament over here, so if you need a flock of well-armed witches and wizards to have your back, you called at the right time."

"This isn't a job for the whole clan! Cecil's not feeling well and could use a hand from his brother, that's all."

Once he's set Emmanuel on his way, Carlos finds a few sticks of that doctor-prescribed incense — was it ever really helping Cecil's moods? Well, if nothing else, it'll smell better than body odor and dust — and sets them burning behind the fan before finally, finally settling down.

Cecil manages to drink half the juice at his coaxing, then crawls into his lap and collapses like a bag of flour.

"Take a sick day tomorrow, _gatito_." Carlos runs his fingers through Cecil's hair, though it's a mess, all greasy, and more tangled than fingers alone can comb out. "Let yourself relax. Take a nice long bath. I'll get this place cleaned up — you can help, if you're up for it."

"Need to go to work," says Cecil.

"You don't. They've got an excellent substitute who can step in."

Most people become eligible to serve as backup Voices by surviving as a station intern for a year and a day. The only person to do that in the past five years is Dana Cardinal, and she's busy being Mayor. But when Strexcorp brute-forced changes in NVCR's ancient protocols to install their own Voice, it stuck. As long as Kevin lives in this universe, the station will accept him as a substitute.

"Need to get out of bed. To go to work." Every sentence fragment sounds like an effort to get out. "That was my reason. For getting out of bed."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Emmanuel is talking to Khoshekh as he comes down the hall: "...didn't think so, but I had to ask. Just hang in there. Your haltijani vaalija's right around the corner."

Carlos shifts Cecil from his lap to the nearest pillow and gets up, dabbing his face with the corner of a sleeve. (Gently. Can't be too rough with his eyes, or they'll bluescreen, and he'll be blind until they reboot.)

The margay daemon is riding awkwardly in his brother's deerskin briefcase, both of Emmanuel's arms holding it half-closed around the lump of fur in the middle. Emmanuel barely nods to Carlos in greeting before brushing past him, with confident, icy self-possession. (He's such a witch sometimes.) "Cecil...! You told me you were coping!"

He pours Khoshekh out onto the mattress, while Cecil mumbles something. Sounds like a repeat of _I have made it to work every day._

"You should have asked for help." Sitting on the edge of the bed, Emmanuel picks up Cecil's arm and tucks it around Khoshekh's body. Even that tiny effort, he wasn't making on his own.

Holding Isaña against his own heartbeat, Carlos drifts closer. This time he catches Cecil's answer: "You're busy with Janice."

"Janice is fine! Janice and her daemon are strong and healthy and proud of themselves — you've barely seen them since the erokärsimys, or you would know that! And even if they weren't, I would find time to be there for my brother. Janice has plenty of uncles who could back me up."

"Better uncles," mutters Cecil.

" _Different_ uncles with _different skills_ that _happen_ to be more suited to _this situation_. Janice doesn't ask you to teach her about erokärsimys, and she doesn't ask any of them to help her sell Girl Scout cookies."

Carlos kneels next to the bed so he's at Cecil's level, setting Isaña next to Khoshekh and touching the back of Cecil's loosely-hanging wrist. He only recognizes maybe fifty words of Suomi, but it includes the one his brother-in-law keeps using here. _Separation suffering._ "This is something to do with your ordeal...?"

Cecil shrugs.

"And you got through that," says Emmanuel firmly. "So you'll get through this, too, and feel better soon."

"Won't feel," mumbles Cecil. "But it's okay. This is fine."

His brother squeezes his shoulder. "Yeah, we'll work on that. Carlos, if you want me to stay with him while you take care of any...." He trails off. "Carlos? Are _you_ fine?"

"A scientist is always fine," says Carlos.

Emmanuel looks _immensely_ skeptical.

"Okay, granted, I just got through spending fifteen hours on airplanes, and my head is still in a time zone where it's two in the morning. But I am not too depressed to get out of bed! Also, I _have_ had coffee."

"If it was Cecil's special coffee, there's no point in trying to sleep, but otherwise, you should get some rest," says Emmanuel. "Anything I can handle around the house before I go? Or pick up at the store, so you'll have it in the morning?"

Carlos shakes his head. "You brought Khoshekh home. That's all I asked for."

"But there are other things you _could_ ask for."

"Nothing I can't get a good night's rest and then take care of."

With a sigh, Emmanuel says a few words to his brother in quiet, Suomi. Carlos has no trouble recognizing _I love you._

Then he nods for Carlos to follow him out.

Carlos tries to indicate, with headshakes and gestures, that he'll stay with Cecil. So Emmanuel picks up his discarded briefcase...and uses it to scoop Isaña off the bed, clamping her shell between its sides and carrying her to the hall.

Great. "I'll be back in just a minute," says Carlos, and hurries after his daemon before the distance between them gets painful. They both swallow their protests while Cecil is in earshot, because, wow, is there anything he would find more upsetting right now than someone's daemon being unwillingly hauled away from them? What the hell is Emmanuel doing?

"What the hell are you doing?" hisses Isaña, once they're safely in the living room.

"You really don't get what's going on here, do you?" demands Emmanuel.

"Of course I do! I've seen how he gets messed-up about...erokärsimys," says Carlos. "After Kevin's ordeal. And after we first watched the Lyra movies from Will's world — the original local release, so it didn't have the R rating, or the mountain of warnings. Both times, I supported him through the aftershocks until he got better! And don't try to say that I only managed it with secret help from you that I no longer remember. You were memorable for one, and in a different universe for the other."

Emmanuel's mouth presses into a thin line. "I did not know about the movie," he admits. "But I did _check_ on you and Cecil, after Kevin. If he'd needed extra help then, I would've been ready. And he needs it now."

He relaxes his grip on the briefcase and half-tosses Isaña into Carlos's waiting arms.

"He won't be okay tomorrow. He might not be okay a month from now. Think about taking care of him long-term. Think about what kinds of responsibilities you'll have to cut, or hand off to other people, to keep that up without burning yourself out. Think about starting those adjustments _now_."

"So that's why I should ask you to do our housework."

"The housework needs doing," says Emmanuel firmly. "And witches take care of their sisters' needs. Or their brothers'."

Okay. Okay, Carlos can change his strategy. Or rather, he can change it for now. If it turns out Emmanuel was completely wrong about how slowly Cecil starts to feel better, they can switch back, and at least he'll have played it safe in the meantime.

"I'd ask if you want time to think about it...but if I know you, you've already put together a methodical ten-point to-do list and can run me through it off the top of your head."

Carlos sighs. "Take my dirty clothes out of the luggage and throw them in the wash, clear up the dishes on the counter, go through the fridge and toss anything that's expired and/or moldy and/or starting to develop sentience, get groceries, get weed killer, change the sheets, call the doctor. See, you were wrong. That's only eight points."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Morning. The night air has cooled the room down, and they never turned off the fan, so it oscillates over Carlos's back in icy waves. Half-asleep, he tugs the sheet over himself and tries to cuddle up to Cecil.

There's no one else in the bed.

Carlos snaps awake, and is relieved to find that Khoshekh, at least, has moved to his and Isaña's basket. Maybe Cecil's on his way up. Maybe last night was when the storm broke.

Leaving his daemon curled up with Khoshekh, Carlos slips into the bathroom.

And there's Cecil. Sitting against the tiled wall, staring aimlessly at the cabinets, arms draped loosely over his knees.

"Hi, kitten." Carlos swallows. "What are you doing down there?"

"I was...." Cecil blinks in confusion, then looks at his hands, at the fingers curled around a razor. "I was going to shave. I thought...you'd like it. If I shaved."

"I think it might make you feel better. And I would like that."

Cecil doesn't respond.

"How about if I help? Would that be okay?"

"That's fine."

Okay. Carlos thinks for a minute about the best way to do this. Making Cecil stand over the sink is probably an unnecessary effort, and if Cecil's knees buckle while there's a blade against his cheek....(Carlos scratches the scar on his own. Yeah, that's too much of a risk.) Getting him to strip and sit in the tub would work, but feels like overkill. If Carlos does end up having to help Cecil bathe, so be it, but in the meantime, Cecil is an adult who needs a shave, not a toddler who just dumped spaghetti sauce all over himself.

"Stay right there," he says, unnecessarily, and he and Isaña round up some supplies. Clips to hold back Cecil's hair. A big bowl: filled with warm water, Cecil can hold it in his lap. Razor, washcloth, shaving cream.

May as well sponge off Cecil's face and neck, while he's down here. Carlos keeps it the motions few degrees gentler than he would be with his own skin. Cecil closes his eyes, and is that wishful thinking, or is he leaning into the touch?

"You like that?" murmurs Carlos, rubbing the washcloth along the line of Cecil's jaw.

"...yes."

Carlos shares a worried look with Isaña, then says, "Do you really like it, or are you just saying what you think I want to hear?"

"...I want you to be happy."

"Well, I want _you_ to be happy. Really happy, not faking it for my benefit."

"Then I am going to disappoint you," says Cecil softly.

"We'll shoot for comfortable, for now," decides Carlos. "Tell me if any of this makes you uncomfortable. If I've got a blade near your face so you can't talk, tap it out on the bowl."

Cecil taps the Morse for O-K.

So Carlos pins Cecil's mess of tangles up out of the way, and goes at Cecil's jawline with careful strokes of the razor and twice as much lather as it probably needs. He doesn't ask any more questions, so Cecil doesn't have to make the effort to respond. Full spoken sentences seemed to exhaust him earlier; would Morse be easier on him in general? Should Carlos brush up...?

At last the warm tan skin is silky-smooth under his fingers. He caresses Cecil's face, thumb sweeping over the high cheekbone, the spray of freckles, the soft lips. "I think you should jump in the bath now," he says. "Would it help if I ran the water?"

Cecil nods.

The tub is half-full when Carlos hears a _whack_ from the front yard.

He switches off the tap. "Don't undress yet, okay?" he tells Cecil, as the mysterious whacking continues. "I'll go make sure that's nothing we'll need to run from."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

It's Delphine and Janice, both wielding axes, taking them to the bases of the spikes in the yard. Janice doesn't have anywhere near her mother's muscle tone, but she makes up for it with plenty of enthusiasm.

"Form, darling! Swing from the shoulder, keep your elbow straight," directs Delphine. Her daemon, a huge silver-grey house cat, is also showing Tehom how to sharpen his claws on the next spike over. "Ah, Carlos! Manny said you had lawn trouble, but he failed to tell us you had an _infestation_."

"Yeah, I guess we let it get a little out of control," says Carlos. "Did he, um. Did he mention anything else?"

Delphine and Emmanuel have an unusual relationship, even by Night Vale standards. In a Timeline that Doesn't Exist, they fell in love, got married, and had a daughter. In the timeline that _does_ exist, they didn't even meet until after Delphine got engaged to someone else. Which is probably true of lots of people...except that in this case they know about it, and avoiding each other completely isn't an option because their daughter still exists. They get along well; they're just really awkward about it.

Carlos isn't sure how much Delphine has been told about Secret Witch Business. He suspects she's picked up a lot, even with her reduced powers of surveillance, but that's only a guess. She in turn doesn't know how much _he_ knows, so they both get cagey around each other whenever the topic comes up.

"Just that Cecil isn't feeling well," says Delphine now. "It isn't throat spiders, is it? I had thought his voice sounded somewhat flat on the air recently...that would be something, wouldn't it, the Voice of Night Vale needing a vocal cord replacement."

"Not throat spiders," says Carlos. "And nothing contagious. But it is really wiping him out. Thank you so much for taking over the lawn. Knock if you need water or bloodstones or anything, and I'll bring it to the door, all right?"

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Cecil has a bath. It's not clear if he actually scrubbed at all or just had a long, placid soak. Definitely didn't touch the shampoo.

He does manage to put on the comfortable clothes Carlos lays out for him. And takes his vitamins. And trudges into the kitchen without any prompting. Oh, good; Carlos hadn't been sure whether he was eating.

Carlos already had music on (their house has a state-of-the-art sound system that reaches every room; it's one of the features Cecil was most excited to install) to accompany throwing the sheets in the wash. He finishes spritzing Febreeze around a couple of rooms and joins Cecil for breakfast.

The fridge and the cupboards are packed with newly-bought food, all lined up in neat rows. Looks like Emmanuel didn't spare any expense. There's even a stack of banana nut muffins on the counter: out in the open, which means they came from one of the only locally-authorized wheat-product dealers, highway-robbery markup and all.

"I'm gonna make fruit salad," says Carlos, hunting through shelves for the cutting board while Cecil sits at the island and slowly, methodically demolishes a muffin. "You want some?"

Cecil swallows his bite of flour-based decadence. "Mmkay."

As Carlos chops strawberries and bananas and whatever these faintly-glowing purple ones are, he tells Cecil about the conference. Fun little anecdotes. Cool scientific revelations. The single protestor, whose cunning plan didn't involve actually hurting Carlos, just dumping paint on him.

His husband doesn't respond much. Just says "hmmm" every so often. It's hard for Carlos to tell if he's really listening, or putting in the bare minimum of effort to fake it. Isaña sits under his chair, ears pricked for any little change Carlos might miss.

Eventually Carlos sets two bowls on the island and says, "How about you, honey? Do you want to talk about anything that happened while I was away?"

A shake of the head.

"Do you want to talk about...anything else?"

Another shake.

"Can I call you in sick to work today?"

"Mmkay."

So Carlos does, offering his best reassurances to the intern on the phone when Station Management starts howling in the background. (Then he calls the health center, making an appointment for later in the week with someone who's more of a specialist than Teddy Williams.) He himself isn't going anywhere. Normally he'd do some work from home over the weekend, but he can put that aside for today.

Cecil, meanwhile, eats most of the fruit, plus two more muffins. The wrappers sit in a crumpled, crumb-dusted heap next to his bowl until Carlos scoops them up. "Let me get these for you."

"Sorry the house's a mess," says Cecil, slumping even lower in his chair.

"Don't apologize," says Carlos...moments before he has to suppress a wince, at the rancid smell when he opens the garbage bin. Better take that out later, not rub Cecil's face in it now. "Remember the week I was quarantined for space measles, so I was too sick to do the mid-year residence chant? The house was a lot more out-of-control then than it is now. How many of our carpets did it eat?"

"I don't have space measles," mumbles Cecil. "Lyme disease isn't even acting up. Everything is perfectly in order. I should be fine."

Carlos decides to stop arguing about how Cecil is allowed to be not-fine (just like he's stopped trying to convince Cecil that whatever conditions he might have, none of them fit the scientific definition of Lyme disease), and focus on making him feel better instead. "If you'd feel less overwhelmed with the place clean, I can tidy up for a while. Would you like to join in? Or would it be easier to relax and recharge? I can ignore the house and sit with you, too, if you like. We can watch a movie or something. What do you want to do?"

For a few seconds Cecil looks utterly blank. As if Carlos just asked him whether he preferred mesons, leptons, or anbarons.

Except that normally he would still _say_ something to that. Maybe _those all sound so scientific, I can't possibly decide!_ Or _certainly not leptons, the Mayor's office released a condemnation of those treacherous particles just last week._ Or even _that depends; in your professional opinion, which would go best with these clogs?_

At last, he gathers his strength and bursts out, "I want you to pick a thing and I want you to make it happen and I don't want to have to _think_ about it."

Oh, good. That means Carlos has a blank check to spoil him.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

The tangled mess of Cecil's hair is no match for the conditioner designed for Carlos's. He works the cream into Cecil's shower-damp cowlicks, combing out the knots as gently as possible, while Cecil lies with his head in Carlos's lap and _Cat Ballou_ plays on the flatscreen.

Khoshekh has been coaxed out of the bedroom; he and Isaña are curled up on a cushion next to Carlos's bare feet. One of Cecil's arms hangs over the side of the couch, brushing against his daemon's marble-furred back.

He doesn't laugh or react to any of the scenes that usually move him — and Carlos ought to know which ones those are, because Cecil's had pretty consistent reactions across the last eighty times they've watched this movie together. There are more than a few moments when Carlos leans over to check whether he's still awake.

The stress-whitened hair is silky-smooth under Carlos's fingers by the time Cat squares off against the robot rogues. He keeps combing and stroking anyway, massaging Cecil's scalp.

At the start of the climactic laser battle, he leans over and discovers that Cecil really is asleep, eyes closed and lips slightly parted.

Carlos traces the modified-Sumerian runes for "sweet dreams" across the back of his neck.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

There are plenty of other ways to pamper Cecil, and Carlos throws himself into them with relish. A call to a local florist brings them half a dozen vases of freshly-cut bouquets, heavy on his husband's favorite bitey snapdragons. He sneaks the overstuffed trash bags out of the house (Delphine and Janice have completely cleared the lawn), and spreads pine-fresh sheets over the bed. When Cecil wakes up, it's the hottest part of the afternoon, and Carlos has made milkshakes.

Emmanuel left a bottle of Cecil's favorite topping in the fridge. Carlos waits until right before they start eating to sprinkle it on, because multiple tests have rated it as highly toxic to humans, and he doesn't want to drink the wrong one by accident. Cecil has always indulged his reluctance, but regularly pokes fun at him for his bland tastes, claiming a good venom gives a dessert "zing."

There's no teasing today. Carlos doesn't miss it — but "Cecil can't summon the energy to be condescending" is not how he wanted it to stop, either.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

"I think you should take a look at that vacation essay tonight," he says, around the time Cecil's show is about to start. He can't remember the last time he got a progress update, but Cecil was supposed to show him after hitting a thousand words, and that hasn't happened yet. "Spend some time working on it. Or just let me look at it. Or both."

Another of those long, uncharacteristic silences. Cecil stares at his hands, picking at a loose nail.

Khoshekh pushes off the carpet with two of his three remaining paws, lands with a thump on the cushion next to them (did he even float, or just jump?), and says, "Would you be...mad...if we didn't finish in time?"

Carlos does a double-take. "If you didn't...? Why wouldn't you finish? You've been working on it for _months_."

"I know, right?" Cecil forces a self-deprecating laugh. "Pathetic, huh?"

"Worrying!" exclaims Carlos. "Let me help. There's nothing wrong with needing help. Where's your ordinater? Show me."

The little laptop is sitting, closed, on the desk in the next room. Cecil brings it over, taps in his password (unmasked, but in wiggly runic characters that Carlos wouldn't remember any better than a series of asterisks), and hands it to Carlos without a word.

No work files on Cecil's laptop. He does all his radio writing and research on the dinosaur of an ordinater in his office. The vacation essay is right there on the desktop, accompanied only by his web browser, a couple of cat GIFs, and a shortcut to his fanfiction folder.

 _629 words_ , the progress bar at the bottom of the window reports.

Nowhere near the required 2500. Carlos skims the scattered paragraphs of vacation plans, barely two pages, full of half-finished sentences. Phrases jump out at him:

_I will spend time with Carlos_

_I will take a flight to Lapland, because I've never been there. I've never visited where Mamá and Old Woman Josie grew up. This is my big chance. I have to take it while I can. I have to see_

_It will be cold. Colder than Night Vale. very cold (too cold??)_

_I will feel good about myself again_

_I will feel things again_

Carlos's heart sinks like a stone.

Cecil's been mired in this for months. _Months._ Emmanuel was right — it's been at least since Janice settled — and in all that time, through all the indirect hints and subtle red flags, Carlos never grasped how bad it was.

"See, you don't want me being like this on your vacation," says Cecil, voice cracking with forced lightness. "I'd drag the whole thing down."

"On _our_ vacation." Carlos bracelets his fingers around Cecil's wrist — the one that usually bears the watch Carlos gave him. "Cecil...if you don't _want_ to go, if it'll make you feel stressed and pressured and unhappy, then we won't go. We'll find somewhere else to travel. Or we can just go to Oslo, and not take the extra flight up to Lapland."

"I...I don't...."

"Or, if you'd really rather stay in Night Vale, we can make it a staycation. We can work out the details after your time off gets approved. I will do everything I can to make sure that happens. I swear."

He almost promises to do something crazy, like confront Station Management face-to-face and demand that they give Cecil his due. But the last thing Cecil needs from Carlos is grand romantic gestures that'll only get him killed. What Cecil needs is for Carlos to make an extra (but realistic) level of effort.

"And in the meantime...I'm going to take some time off."

"You are?" echoes Cecil. "You can't."

"Sure I can. The executive director gets to set his own hours. That's the first thing an executive director does."

"But your work. It's important. I can't take you away from that."

" _You're_ important!" exclaims Carlos. "When I'm the one who's not okay, you go out of your way to take care of me. Remember when that carnival came through town, and it turned out I was violently allergic to the pony rides? Or at least, the things they claimed were pony rides? You brought me straight home, and made sure I always had enough tissues and Claritin."

Reluctantly, Cecil nods.

"Or when we'd just been rescued from being kidnapped by Strex," pipes up Isaña. "You snuck around behind their backs to see us as much as possible, and comforted us, and helped heal Carlos's face...and put up with us yelling at you anyway, because we'd run ourselves to exhaustion."

Another nod.

"Or when I got sucked into a condo, and you projected yourself out of your body and dove in there to pull me out," says Carlos. "Even though it took so long you left some dead airtime after the weather. Or at the end of the War, when I'd lost my eyes! That all happened so fast, you couldn't even get vacation time. So you used up some of your own sick days to stay with me, to take care of me and help me cope."

"That was...different."

"How?" It's strange and scary to hear him talk like this. Cecil has never turned down Carlos's help and comfort before, not when he needs it. "Give me one scientific reason how it's different."

Cecil doesn't answer....

"We do not want to be alone," puts in Khoshekh.

Cecil gives him a shove.

Carlos's arms flash out and hold Cecil's back. He wouldn't let anyone else manhandle Cecil's daemon; he's not going to put up with Cecil doing it. "I'm not abandoning my career, okay? I'm just taking a couple of days off. A week, max. There's nothing I can't reschedule or delegate for that long. I don't have to let you be alone."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Carlos's PA is not impressed with his "a couple of days...a week, max" line.

"You are running a massive multi-dimensional foundation here! You have _schedules_. You have _obligations_. You cannot throw around vague, fuzzy timeframes like you're still the freewheeling director of a ten-person research outpost in the middle of Dangerville, Nowhere."

Carlos accepts her chastisement with minimal grumbling. No job is perfect, after all. It becomes perfect after you learn to work within its constraints. "A week, then. Cancel all my appointments, or postpone them, or tell Carissa Reimer she's in charge, for exactly five work days."

He calls his brother-in-law next. "You were right. He's not okay. I'm taking the week off — can I lean on you a little anyway, maybe have you keep him company if I have to run errands, or something?"

"I'll email you a copy of the times I'm scheduled to spend with Janice and Tehom," says Emmanuel. "Any other part of the day, I'm at your disposal."

His voice doesn't really do the ominous-deepening-for-emphasis thing that comes so naturally to Cecil, but he gives it his best shot:

" _Any_ part."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

After picking out some pajamas for Cecil to change into, Carlos lets Cecil fall asleep cuddled against his side, while he silently thinks up an essay and watches the ideas flow onto the pages of the Little Scientist's Book of Big-Boy Note-Taking.

Not Cecil's vacation essay. One for himself. Of course, since they're going to the same place, Cecil will be welcome to read this over and borrow ideas from if he feels like it.

Carlos doesn't have the poetic gift that Cecil does, but he's written a lot of research papers, and the Little Scientist's Book makes it effortless to get your thoughts down once you have them. Words pile up by the hundreds.

_While I am on vacation with Cecil, we will take turns making each other breakfast. We will take leisurely walks to different touristy sites, and Cecil will pull interesting facts about them off the top of his head, and I will think they sound like they come from another universe's history, strange but captivating. I will read printed labels out loud for him; he will look at statues and gardens and tell me about the signs of human touch that only he can see._

_We will find a boat or a ferry, like the one we rode in Trimountaine two summers ago, and he won't be intimidated by all the water this time, he'll be able to relax and take in the scenery. We'll visit a theology museum, and Cecil will want to see all the things my foundation has had a hand in, and he'll expect me to be able to explain them all, but will still be proud of me even when it turns out I can't. We'll go out for dinner, and he will order in the servers' native language without even thinking about it, and they'll be so impressed._

_He won't know it's impressive, but I'll tell him. I'll tell him whenever I happen to notice that he's being smart, or brave, or sweet, or kind, or terrifying but in a good way, or all the wonderful things my Cecil is. I'll remind him that he makes me happy, every day, and that he has every right to be happy with himself._

The sky outside is lightening to a pre-dawn teal by the time he puts the book away...and the word count is 2,872.


	3. Coming Through In Waves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cecil struggles to stay afloat. Carlos searches for treatments, and, in the meantime, leans on their entire support network to make the path as easy as possible.

Cecil's essay is finished by Wednesday, and he wants to go back to work. He holds the six-page printout in shaking hands while Carlos drives him to the station and kisses him goodbye.

Khoshekh is staying at home. Emmanuel's keeping him company. There are things Carlos needs to fix up around the house while he has the free time, but first he steers himself to the rec center. The gym at his office hasn't been a workout option this week, and he needs some exercise.

He's delighted to step out of the changing room and find Kevin and Tamika sparring on the nearest mat.

Seventeen-year-old Tamika is whip-fast, all muscle, and, though she still has another year in high school, already being fought over by every high-ranked college literature program in the Spanish-speaking world. She's a trained expert in whatever weapon you hand her. At the moment, she and Kevin are dueling with solid wooden bo staffs.

(Kevin's favorite. Solid at both offense and defense; limited risk of drawing blood. Tamika's the one who got him into it; she's always been the first and strongest link in his support system.)

Their daemons sit on the sidelines, watching the match: Tamika's massive African buffalo, Rashi, and Kevin's limber African painted dog, Va'eira. She doesn't take her eyes off Kevin, because without them he can't see what he's doing. That's no big deal when they're walking side-by-side, but impressive when Kevin is fending off blows he can only see from behind and at an angle.

Rashi, meanwhile, notices Carlos and Isaña, and lifts his head in greeting. He and Tamika must also be in four-eye, because Tamika shifts her staff from two hands to one, pivots to look at Carlos, and waves...all while still holding her own against Kevin one-handed. "Hi, scientist. You want a go at the winner?"

Carlos grins. "It's an honor, but I'd rather fight Kevin."

(Staff fighting is Carlos's favorite too. For years he hadn't even realized it was an option; he figured he had to learn one of the self-defense methods used by his other Night Vale friends, and get over his shyness around weapons that were projectile-based, sharp-and-pointy, or both. Then Tamika suggested bojitsu for Kevin, and Carlos finally noticed how his own most successful physical fights all involved whacking his opponent with a cane or a baseball bat, and realized it was a skill he was allowed to build on. )

"I'm hurt!" exclaims Kevin, mock-pouting. "Just because it's true does not make it any less hurtful."

Sure enough, in the next instant, he attempts an under-the-leg sweep — Tamika hops his staff like a jump-rope, catches it with one foot, and, instead of tripping, does some kind of quick twist that knocks him to the mat. The dark glasses over his eye sockets would have gone flying if they weren't held on with elastic. His staff _does_ go flying.

Carlos ducks.

Tamika helps Kevin up, and they bow to signal the end of the match. Carlos retrieves the wayward staff and brings it over; Isaña says hello to the other daemons, touching noses first with Va'eira (who isn't much bigger than Khoshekh), then Rashi (who has more armor in a single horn than Isaña has body mass). Kevin takes Tamika's. "All right, go pick on someone your own skill level."

"I'll try," says Tamika wryly. To Carlos, she adds, "You haven't been in here for a while, have you? Remember to warm up. Do your katas."

From any other kid, Carlos would be annoyed at the matter-of-fact bossing. From the God-Destroyer, if she says jump, he doesn't complain even if he's already in the air. "I will."

He nods to Kevin, and they step into the opening position of a simple practice form. She's right, he's out-of-practice, but it doesn't take long for the muscle memories to kick in.

"Is Cecil feeling better?" asks Kevin on their third run-through of the form, when he can tell Carlos's moves are fluid and sure-footed again — step, step, high block, low block, swing, thrust, clack, spin! "I told myself, if he was out sick for more than a few days, I would send him a card. And they didn't call me to the station today, so he must not be out. Should I still send a card?"

"I'm sure he'd appreciate the thought!" Carlos ducks a swing at his head, jumps over one at his ankles, twists to do an inside block. "And, ah — if you have any pick-me-up book recommendations — he might like those, too."

"I think that might do more harm than good," says Kevin sheepishly, whacking the end of Carlos's staff against the mat. "Cecil does not appreciate my favorite books. He thinks they're _boring_."

They step away from each other to start the form over, re-adjusting their grips and catching their breaths...and Isaña takes advantage of their relaxed concentration to murmur to Va'eira, "Not books that happen to make you feel better...we meant books about _how_ to feel better."

The painted dog's tail sinks. "Oh," she says softly. "He's that kind of sick."

"It's not as bad as...as it could be," says Isaña, catching herself before saying _not as bad as you used to be. He's sad and hurt, yes, but he hasn't stopped getting out of bed in the morning. If he had a corporeal death like you do, it would be keeping its distance too, not hovering over his shoulder._ "We just think it's good scientific practice to cover all our bases."

"We can help with that." Va'eira gets to her feet, radar-dish ears pointing forward. "There are some good standbys on our shelves, but the best ones will need a library run...Be back in a minute."

She trots off in the direction of Tamika (currently on the far side of the room, dueling another teenager with rapier techniques learned from _The Last Unicorn_ ).

While his daemon is away, Kevin clicks his tongue and beckons Carlos over. Carlos relaxes his grip on the staff and approaches. Since Va'eira is Kevin's eyes, he throws in a low noise of affirmation so Kevin knows he's close.

"We have similar chemistry, right?" asks Kevin under his breath. "Brain chemistry. Me and Cecil."

"That's right." It's one of the things Carlos remembers drawing the most excitement from another local scientist who studied the two. (Unity the comparative physiologist, Night Vale research team, summer 2015. Other highlights included "his spleen and his pancreas are in exactly the opposite places" and, to Cecil's extreme jealousy, "his body can synthesize its own caffeine!")

"Well, you can tell him that what I'm on, what's working for me, is a thing called Dark MegaProzac."

"...seriously?"

"I know, I know, it sounds pretty evil! It's from a former Strexcorp subsidiary, and they didn't want to redo all their branding. Terrible marketing decision if you ask me...not that anyone did...but I've been on it for a couple of years, while being monitored by multiple non-evil doctors, and there haven't been any side effects I wasn't informed about up-front. You know I would never recommend it if there had been."

Yeah, Carlos knows. "I'll pass it on. Thanks."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

He mentions both the books and the meds when he picks Cecil up that evening. Cecil doesn't sound enthusiastic. "I will try them if you want."

"Or we can try something else," says Carlos, trying to be encouraging. "It's up to you. We can even ask Fey to calculate what would help you most. Everyone at the Foundation gets an allowance of personal questions, and I have a few saved up."

Cecil looks miserable as he sinks into the passenger seat. "I do not want Fey to worry about me."

"Um." Carlos sets his daemon in the back seat, avoiding Cecil's eyes. "She might be doing that already. I mean, I do talk to her about things."

"You what? Does she tell _you_ things?"

"She tells me off for seeking medical information that you haven't consented to divulge, is what she tells me!" says Carlos sheepishly. "Her ethics library is so advanced these days. We haven't had to do more than minor update packages for almost a year. I'm so proud."

"But you haven't programmed her not to look things up for her own information," points out Cecil, as they pull out of the parking lot.

This is true. Fey insists on keeping autonomy in some areas, and considering her history, Carlos can hardly blame her. "Doesn't mean she will. When you had an alethiometer, you didn't abuse it like that, right?"

"Sometimes I found out personal things by accident! You know that as well as anyone."

Also true.

"I'm getting along. I'm surviving," adds Cecil. "Isn't that good enough? I don't want you to waste your time working and stressing and searching for...whatever magic fix you're imagining. It is not going to work. You're not magic."

"I'm a _little_ magic," protests Carlos. "I got a solid 2% on the aptitude test. Scientifically speaking, two is a greater percentage than zero."

"I know how percentages work!"

Carlos falls silent. Even he knows there are times when more science is not the answer.

They make it all the way back to the house before Cecil speaks again. It sounds like an effort. "I know you only want to help."

Carlos parks, switches off the ignition, and pats the dashboard to show the car he appreciates it. "And I know there's no switch I can flip that will instantly make everything better. I'm just trying to find ways that will make it a little easier. You can still imagine that, right? What it would feel like for things to be a little bit easier?"

"I already said I would try the medication. And the books."

Not quite the affirmation Carlos was looking for, but he'll take what he can get.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

He singlehandedly fills out the paperwork to renew their coffee permit, which was dangerously close to overdue. He orders a replacement for a cabinet where he found an untreated stain, from something strong enough to warp the wood like damp cardboard. He vacuums the rugs and mows the lawn, cleans the bathroom and makes sure Cecil gets in the tub at least once every other day.

He drives Cecil to and from work, plus once to the health center for a doctor's appointment, and picks up Cecil's new prescription along with his eyedrops at the nearest non-forsaken CVS.

When they get home on Saturday night, Emmanuel is working on dinner. Carlos doesn't know what the menu is; Cecil said he didn't care what his brother made, anything was fine. So it's a surprise for both of them when they find Emmanuel stirring a pot of bright-yellow macaroni.

Carlos glances over the edge of the pot and raises an eyebrow. "Are those...fun shark shapes?"

"That's right!" says the wizard. (Literal wizard, if not culinary wizard.) "And for tonight's streaming selection: several episodes from the original 1980's run of _Don't Hug Me I'm Scared_ , lovingly restored by the most attentive pirates on the Internet. Or, if you prefer something a little more sophisticated, the concurrent run of _My Little Pony_."

"Hey, I remember that," says Cecil, with a watery, nostalgic smile. "This is...sweet of you. Really sweet."

Instead of being proud or gratified, Emmanuel looks...uncertain. Maybe concerned. "If that sounds too childish, we can watch...I don't know, one of your husband's documentaries. And I can throw some seasonings and things in the pot to class it up. Although there's not much to be done about the fun shark shapes."

"It's okay! This is good," says Cecil thinly. "I'm gonna go wash up."

While he's in the bathroom, Carlos murmurs, "Is it Municipal Childhood Throwback Night and I missed the news, or something?"

"This was his favorite when he was a kid. Mamá made a ton of it while he was recovering."

"Ah."

"I got sick of it pretty fast, but she told me if I wanted anything different, I'd have to make it myself. I was already pretty good with a bow — this was when Josie just taught me how to skin and dress the things I caught. And to make biscuits." Emmanuel sighs. "Maybe I should've gone with biscuits and lizard à la king instead."

"The macaroni is good enough for me," says Carlos quickly. "And, listen, I'm sure Cecil appreciates the thought! Even if he isn't as effusive about it as he usually would be." Small smiles are the best he's gotten out of Cecil for a while...and it's too early for the meds to have kicked in. If they're going to.

His brother-in-law doesn't look reassured. "He's putting on a good front. I mean, this isn't hurting, but it isn't comforting like I hoped it would, either."

"How can you tell?"

Emmanuel taps his temple. "I can still see things you can't, fancy-eyes. Trust me on this one."

They eat in front of the screen, Emmanuel on an armchair, Cecil and Carlos nestled together on the couch. Cecil cleans his plate, so he must at least be okay with the meal, but he's asleep before the credits roll.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Back at work, Carlos has almost no trouble re-settling into the rhythm of things.

There's an interworldly geology meetup to schedule, for the benefit of a universe where scientists are only just beginning to understand why the earth rumbles sometimes. There's a new round of internships to sign off on (mostly a formality, since Fey has already approved them; Carlos is unsurprised but delighted to see that Megan Wallaby's application has been accepted). There's a charity fundraiser to shoot a video for.

Eight people have emailed or Facebook-messaged him to let him know that the town where he grew up just voted to rename a street after him. Carlos is almost as flattered as he was when Harvard renamed its science building.

Over his lunch breaks, he does some light leisure reading on different worlds' best treatments for depression. There's a lot to take in. A wide variety of compounds that change the way the brain processes certain chemicals. Neural reconstruction surgery, pioneered in a universe where the dominant species has totally different neural structures, not yet tested in this one. Targeted anbaric shock, a crude way of affecting the brain's Rusakov production...with major side effects, including uncontrolled memory loss. Targeted Rusakov-particle shock, much more subtle and with fewer side effects, but astronomically expensive. Dozens of different schools of talk therapy.

He resists the urge to bombard Cecil with a long discussion of the pros and cons of each treatment method. Gathers the information in his own mind, that's all, to have it ready if Cecil asks.

In the meantime, he bombards Cecil with casual, uplifting things. Boasting about the renamed street, photos of the plants in his office as they're starting to flower, and the opening of this great joke one of his English-speaking co-workers told him. ("Did you hear the one about the artificial structure for the excavation of groundwater?")

He promised to text Cecil every day. Sometimes Isaña has to remind him, but together they pull it off.

And, going on Emmanuel's reference to things even bionic eyes can't see, he checks out one of the Foundation's electrum spyglasses and brings it home.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

The golden currents of Rusakov particles around Cecil, as seen through electrum lenses, are sluggish and thin. He should be swirling with patterns shaped by curiosity, intelligence, warm feelings towards his friends and family, nascent plans for tomorrow's show, the romantic fulfillment of knowing that their anniversary is coming up soon. Instead, he's...not.

"I'm dim, I know," he says dismissively, hanging his bag in the closet and kicking off his ballet flats. For a second Carlos wants to reassure him that he's plenty smart, then realizes, no, Cecil's just saying his vision can already tell how little Rusakov radiation he's putting out.

No wonder he's been making so few decisions lately. His capacity to care, about anything, is physically limited. Doesn't make sense to waste it on being invested in what clothes he's wearing or what food he's eating.

Carlos puts down the spyglass and hugs him. As if by sheer proximity he can transfer some of his own Rusakov production to Cecil, like sharing body heat. Instead of relaxing into the embrace, Cecil tenses: "Don't. I'm all sweaty, I'm disgusting."

"So we'll both need to shower," says Carlos, unbothered. He's barely even been outside, and it's air-conditioned in here. "Anything more strenuous than usual happen today? Did you have to run for your life earlier?"

"Localized heat wave. Surrounded the station."

"Sounds fascinating."

Cecil shrugs. "It was only picketing for higher wages during overtime hours. Typical labor dispute. Typical endless, grinding struggle for any kind of fair and decent treatment in a vast uncaring world."

"Hey, it's not all bad," says Carlos. "Today I gave someone half a million dollarpounds for the study and conservation of the Ecuadorian spotted wasp."

Cecil doesn't go for the obvious conversation-starting questions, like what a dollarpound is and how much it's worth, or what "ecuadorian" means. But he does let go of some of that tension, sagging into Carlos's arms.

"I'd like to join you in the shower, if you don't mind," says Carlos hopefully.

The Morse for I DO NOT gets tapped out against his shirt.

At one point, this kind of offer would have been almost guaranteed to go to innuendo-based places. Even if it was a night when things weren't happening for Carlos's body, he would be happy to help Cecil's along. And loving, consensual sexual stimulation _is_ a way of boosting someone's Dust production.

Tonight, it really is just showering. Still restorative in other ways, though, since Cecil gets what might be the first serious full-body scrubbing he's had in weeks. And Carlos makes a point of kissing every one of his scars in the process, just in case.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

He arranges for people to visit over the next couple of weeks, keeping Cecil company while Carlos is at work. Not constant company — the point isn't to overwhelm Cecil — just regular contact with close friends.

Steve shows up with fresh scones, and takes Cecil to one of Renée Carlsberg's soccer games. Josie drives both Cecil and Carlos to a bowling tournament, where Cecil does manage to applaud their resounding victory over the Desert Bluffs team, and they take home a basket of extra wings afterward. Michelle Nguyen brings some albums from bands Carlos has never heard of, plus some egg rolls that she claims are a new experimental way of recording, and is so disgusted at Carlos's un-hip-ness that she won't speak to him for the rest of the day. Later, when Cecil plays one of the (non-egg-roll) albums on his own initiative, Carlos decides the derision was worth it.

Mayor Cardinal's security staff don't allow her to visit homes with average defense systems, so she invites them to the mayoral residence for orange salad and moss wine. Some political rival chooses that night to attack, apparently assuming her guard will be down. She draws a sword, Carlos borrows a staff, and the two of them successfully fend off the herd of ravenous snow-bunnies.

And Carlos tries to arrange a way to work from home a couple of days a week.

He'd just as soon do it every day, but there are things that can only be accomplished at the office...including some that push him into overtime. There's an evening when he texts Cecil to apologize, he's stuck in a tense diplomatic negotiation involving an otherworldly superpower that's trying to reinvent the reality bomb, so he's likely to miss dinner. Another text asks Emmanuel to go make sure Cecil is okay, not left alone.

The meeting goes long enough that he reserves a couple of hotel rooms and tells his pilot not to wait up. Finally he staggers into his own room, eats the mint on the pillow for dinner, and collapses without even bothering to put in his eyedrops.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

The flight back home is slower than usual, because there are all these glowing red obelisks hovering over town that the gyropter has to weave around. So that's annoying. Carlos drops the saturation on his vision to cut down on the distracting glow, and sends his chauffeur away with an extra tip.

He spots Emmanuel over the edge of the roof, pulling weeds in the garden below. Neharah rises to meet them, the flies making a cloud of sharp black dots against the crimson sky.

"You stayed overnight?" asks Carlos. "Did you just feel like having a sleepover, or was Cecil...?"

"He was having such a good time, we didn't want to leave," buzzes Neharah. "We had Big Rico's and played Monopoly until he crashed, then fell asleep in the guest room. Don't worry, we washed the sheets after we got up. Then we decided to spruce up the garden while he was still asleep. Which he probably isn't now, after that racket...but don't worry, we're happy to finish."

"You weeded that garden a week ago. There can't be much more to do," points out Carlos. "C'mon in. Have you had breakfast?"

They have — and Cecil, improbable as it seems given the gyropter landing right over his head, is still asleep when Carlos checks in the bedroom — and Carlos had scrambled eggs at the hotel. He convinces Emmanuel to come in for orange milk anyway.

Getting the wizard to relax is more of a struggle. He keeps trying to get up and sort the Tupperware, or renew the hexes on the microwave, or scrub minor stains from the recently-cleaned stove.

When Carlos finally badgers his brother-in-law into sitting _down_ already, he says, "Can I ask you something personal?"

"Can't promise I'll answer, but go ahead."

Carlos sets his glass in a strip of the weird red light from the nearest window. If there's an optics expert on the current Night Vale team, they'll be having a ball today. "Look, when you were kids...after Cecil's ordeal...did your mother put it on you to help take care of him?"

"...No more than usual. Probably less than usual."

"And was that a lot?"

"Ah, you've got kid siblings, you know how it is," says Emmanuel lightly. "I'd hold on to school permission slips so he didn't lose them...read captions and translate Morse-code notices, back when he hadn't learned how...distract him when the ice cream truck came by, so he didn't fall prey to its vile, unspeakable fate...that kind of thing."

"Sure, of course."

"Mamá was always there for the big stuff. If we had to go to the library to pick up a book, Bekhorei would come along — he took a few limbs off of three different librarians before they learned to steer clear. After the separation, she dropped all her other responsibilities so she could take care of Cecil." A muscle in his cheek twitches. "Honestly, it might've been better if she _had_ put some of that on me. You've met our mom; you know emotional support and reassurance isn't exactly her strong suit. But, credit where credit is due...she was as comforting as I think she knew how to be."

A sudden sense of déjà vu nags at Carlos's mind. "Have you told me about this before? When you were unmemorable...?"

"Doesn't seem likely. You wouldn't have understood it. Couldn't keep track of the context."

"Still, it's ringing a lot of bells....did you just talk about your brother being sick, maybe? Even if I didn't know it was Cecil, or what exactly had happened to him, I could have followed that...." 

Sometimes, when Carlos reaches for these memories, he comes up as blank as if Emmanuel had never been un-cursed. This time, he gets lucky. "You got sent away!"

Neharah buzzes in alarm.

"To a family friend. That must have been Josie, right? You got shipped off to stay with her for a little while...at first you weren't even told what was going on...am I getting this right?"

"Stayed with Josie for the first week," says Emmanuel reluctantly. "She told me upfront that Cecil would recover, then, a few days later, got over being too angry to talk about it and explained the rest." He sighs. "I wasn't kidding when I said Mamá dropped _all_ her responsibilities. And let me tell you, it was pretty stressful for twelve-year-old me, because the TV at Josie's place? Half the size of ours."

Oh, good, he can kid around about it. Even though Carlos is about eighty percent certain he remembers a man in a tan jacket crying on his shoulder, lamenting how forces outside his control were keeping him from helping his baby brother, _again_.

Across the house, the bed creaks. Cecil must be getting up.

Carlos stands. Probably better not to dwell on past comfort he was never intended to remember giving. In the present, though, he says, "You've been an incredible support this time around. You know that, right? Can't imagine what I would have done without you. And I know Cecil appreciates having you around, having someone who understands what he's been through. You have nothing to overcompensate for."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

They're having a leisurely evening cuddle (Carlos is the big spoon) when the doorbell rings.

"I'll get it," murmurs Carlos, kissing the back of Cecil's neck and untangling their limbs. He's not sure who would be stopping by tonight. Is it Kevin or Tamika, here to pick up some books before they become overdue? Or maybe it's Sherie, with the —

It's nobody Carlos would have invited. His mother-in-law is standing on the front porch.

"Did Cecil invite you over?" asks Carlos sharply.

Sohvi Palmero cocks her head, birdlike. Her eyes are cold and milky. "No."

"Has Cecil said anything about wanting to see you?"

"No."

"Then I think you should go."

She goes.

Carlos doesn't realize until she's out of sight how hard his heart is pounding. He scoops up Isaña and cradles her against his T-shirt, wedding ring clicking against her shell, both of them immensely relieved that they didn't have to stare down Sohvi's librarian-maiming daemon too.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

After an encounter like that, can anyone blame Carlos for hovering a little?

He finally hashes out a telecommuting plan, and does a lot of the work on his laptop at the Internet café down the block from NVCR, making it that much simpler to chauffeur Cecil. When they're both in the house, he tries to be as engaging as possible, and never to get too far out of Cecil's sight.

The good news is, Cecil seems to be recovering some of his energy. He gets back into doing his own shaving on a regular basis. Empties the dishwasher one morning, does the laundry another. Successfully holds the ladder while Carlos cleans the gutters. When Carlos checks him out with a spyglass, he's clearly driving stronger currents of intention.

Still not smiling as much as he used to, but hopefully that will come with time.

And his responses to Carlos's attempts at conversation are still pretty low-key. Well, Carlos doesn't need much to keep his own side going. He talks about the new exploratory probe their universe has launched towards the Kuiper Belt. Relates the story of how one of the NVCC professors tried to harass Sherie's daughter for being an Outsider, until the Faceless Old Woman who secretly lives in zer home replaced all of zer shoes with dried leaves and unlikely theories about bees. Tells Cecil about the festival that's being organized in Los Ángeles to celebrate interworldly rock music.

He talks about tattoo ideas. Which is a sensitive subject, he knows; Cecil's only past experiences with tattoos involve a Strexcorp barcode being forced onto his neck. But Carlos has had a really cool idea, so he rolls it out as lightly as possible.

"First we diagram a molecule composed of cerium, carbon, and illinium, okay? Maybe using our universe's standard chemical notation, but a bunch of the worlds in the Foundation have much more artistic ones, so maybe I'd go for that instead."

"Mmhmm?" says Cecil over his nearly-empty trout soda. They're relaxing on the patio, feet resting in the shaded grass.

"And then we make a matching diagram of carbon, argon, lonsdaleum, and sulfur. Or maybe a macromolecule that encompasses both —"

"Carlos?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you — stop?"

"Um," says Carlos. "Sure. Sorry."

The grass whistles and chimes as a light breeze blows through it.

"Just to, ah, clarify," stammers Carlos. "Is it only this specific design you don't want to hear about, or the whole idea of tattoos?"

In a careful, strained voice, Cecil says, "I would like you to stop talking."

Carlos stops talking.

He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times.

Isaña, next to his foot, sits up straighter.

Cecil stares at his empty glass.

...and then Carlos is at it again. "For, like, an hour, or the rest of the day, or what? — and do you want me to keep sitting with you quietly, or get up and go somewhere else altogether? — and should I come back to drive you to work, or —"

"I can get myself to work! I just — I need some _space_ ," says Cecil, sounding like he's trying very hard not to shout, or cry, or both.

Carlos gets up, bites his tongue to keep from saying anything else, and goes inside.

He spends a good ten minutes pacing a hole in the living room carpet, needing his daemon to talk him down from second-guessing everything he just left unsaid. "Should I have apologized for hovering this past week? Offered to take his cup when I went in? Gotten another verbal confirmation that he'll be okay? I worry. I have a right to be worried. Maybe I should have pointed that out. I didn't tell him I love him — maybe as I left I should have reminded him that I love him. And what if I'm away too long? Should've held out for exact details of how much distance I'm supposed to provide, and for how long, and whether I should text Cecil while I'm gone, or maybe keep on keeping quiet after I get back, or...."

"He wants to be left alone right now," Isaña repeats. "He's allowed to need space! If we start making up reasons to ignore that, we'll just end up annoying him and making him need even _more_ space."

She's right. Probably. Carlos is going to be a mature, well-adjusted adult and calm down about this.

At some point.

"We should call someone," adds Isaña. "To hang out. Not with Cecil, just with us."

"We could do that," allows Carlos. It's been a while.

"Or we could go hit things for a while? That might help too."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Carlos opts to do both.

He swings a high pass, Kevin blocks, and their staffs whack satisfyingly together.

They spar their way across the rec center mat, daemons watching from the sidelines. It's calming. Refreshing. Good.

Along the way, Kevin gets caught up in reminiscing about his home universe. Everyday details, pre-War stuff, nothing about his own past heartaches, no major scientific revelations. How long has it been, since Carlos had a real conversation that wasn't about work or trauma or both?

They end up making a leisurely trip downtown together: a scenic bus ride here, a casual stroll through Mission Grove Park there. When Cecil's show comes on, NVCR is playing in a barbershop and Kevin needs a haircut, so Carlos hangs around and listens to that too.

After the show they finally part ways, and Carlos waits to see if Cecil will call or text for a ride home. When a reasonable amount of time with no contact, he wanders over to the nearest cinema and takes in a film.

It's good and refreshing too, until the lights go up, when Carlos switches his phone back on...and finds two missed calls from Cecil, plus half a dozen texts.

_Are you still at the rec center?_

_I didn't mean to send you away for the whole night._

_Please come home._

_Unless you want to stay over with someone. You can do that. It's not an emergency. I'll be okay if you don't come home right away._

_Are you mad?_

_Please say something._

As soon as he's outside, Carlos calls back. He's fine, he tells Khoshekh; he was at a movie, that's all. ("Oh. Oh!" exclaims Khoshekh. Then, muffled, as if turning to call over his shoulder: "He was at a movie!" Then a scramble, and Cecil comes on the line.) "I'm waiting for the 70 towards Void Crossing right now. I'll be home soon, okay?"

This time, he does get to end the conversation with, "I love you."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Cecil is sitting on the front porch when Carlos gets home, cupping something in his hands. It's about the size of the alethiometer, giving Carlos a shiver of familiarity...then he gets close enough for detail, eyes adjusting for the low light, and, ah, it's just a block of wood.

Well, maybe not "just." It's roughly the shape of an alethiometer, including three protrusions around the edge...and there's a short knife in one of Cecil's palms, a light trail of shavings around his feet.

"Hi, Carlos." Cecil's voice wobbles. "Sorry I'm such a basket case today."

"It's okay." Carlos joins him on the bench, while Isaña joins Khoshekh on the platform under the wicker seat. "I didn't mean to scare you, I just — you didn't sound like you wanted regular updates, so I did my own thing for a while — if you wanted me to check in, you should've said."

"I know," says Cecil miserably. "I'm sorry."

"I was always going to come home tonight. If I decided to crash with a friend overnight, I _would_ have gotten in touch with you for that. Like I do when I have to work late."

"Uh-huh."

Carlos's record at keeping Cecil in-the-loop about his plans is far from perfect, but a lot better than it once was. Partly because the War came along, forcing everyone to sharpen out of necessity in order to make it through. And partly because he wanted to be a decent boyfriend. Disappearing on your partner is no way to treat them even when they're the picture of emotional health.

"I was never mad at you," he says softly. "Freaked out for a while, but that's all. I had a good day." Trying to lighten the mood, he adds, "If you tried to kick me out of the house, _then_ I'd be mad."

Cecil sniffles. "I was afraid you thought that's what I did."

The events of the evening take on a whole new light.

"I — I was afraid I'd pushed you away, and —" Cecil hiccups over the words. "— you were hurting and it was my fault and I couldn't make it stop, _I couldn't make it stop_ —"

That's the scalded six-year-old Cecil shining through, clear as day.

"It's okay. Cecil, shhh, it's all right," soothes Carlos, while his daemon snuggles close to Cecil's and presses her face against his. "I'm not hurt. And if I ever was, I would tell you, and we'd work it out. It would be okay. We're okay."

If things get rocky, it's because their old comfortable routine fell apart underneath them, and they keep having to figure out new ones on the fly. Cecil needs more presence and reassurance from Carlos than he did a year ago, but maybe more space than he did last month. It's fine. Gotta adjust, that's all. A scientist is adaptable.

(Carlos wonders if, when Cecil's vacation time gets approved, he'll still want to take it as a couple. It's been so long since he's been on a solo out-of-town trip, as opposed to Carlos, who gets them every other month. He'll have to ask.)

For now, Carlos keeps up the soothing patter, until it seems like it's pulled Cecil back from whatever brink he was slipping over. Then, cautiously, he offers a happier conversation topic. "So, hey...you're carving again?"

"I thought...it used to make me happy," says Cecil with a shrug. "I thought I should try to get back to that."

It used to fill him with enthusiasm, is what it did. Carlos has so many memories of watching animal figures emerge from blocks of wood, or decorative patterns weave around canes and clothespins: of Cecil gleefully posting in-progress shots on Tumblr, glowing with artistic inspiration (literally, if you looked through an electrum spyglass) as his knife flowed over the surface of his latest project.

He's not like that now. But Carlos can see such a difference from four to six weeks ago, when he wouldn't even have bothered to pick up a block of wood. "It's good to see," he tells Cecil, and holds back from giving a whole lecture on the scientifically-proven Rusakov-particle-generating properties of creative endeavors. "Tell me about the thing you're working on."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lonsdalium and Illinium are not our-world element names. Evidently, in Lyra's world, [Kathleen Lonsdale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Lonsdale) got an element named after her, and the U of I ["discovery" of element 61](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promethium#Searches_for_element_61) was legitimate.
> 
> Point is, the molecule acronyms end up being CeCIl and CArLoS.
> 
> Some visual aids: [bo staff practice forms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPfmEBccqs8); a [carved wooden margay](https://www.flickr.com/photos/skulpturliv/6273305212/).


	4. Something Solid Forming in the Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cecil tries to reach out to friends and family on his own, with mixed results. Carlos has an embarrassing encounter. And there's still no word about when or if they'll get a vacation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains a panic attack and canon-typical suicidal ideation.
> 
> For the record, Dark MegaProzac is a product of [Kakos Industries](http://kakosindustries.com/).
> 
> New art: [Witches and Sons](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Witches-and-Sons-550127837), the color version.

"We don't have to stay for the whole festival," says Carlos, in English and under his breath, as they step off the bus across from Mission Grove Park.

"It's the anniversary of the treaty that ended the Blood Space War," points out Cecil. "It is my patriotic duty to stay for the whole festival."

"I'm just saying, if you can't, it's fine. If you need to be discreet about tapping out, you can be discreet." Carlos takes Cecil's hand, and brush-taps the signal they discussed against his skin: the Morse procedural sign for _This station is closing down now_.

Cecil rearranges their hands so he's holding Carlos's fingers closed. "I appreciate your concern, but I am going to be fine." Pushing his face into a strained imitation of a grin, he adds: "Besides, Janice's Girl Scout troop is doing an archery demonstration! I can't disappoint Janice!"

Carlos stops talking. If only because that expression is disturbing, and he doesn't want Cecil to feel pressured to keep making it just for Carlos's benefit.

There are plenty of Night Vale citizens who can't bring themselves to events like this at all. Too reminiscent of the Strexcorp prison-camp-disguised-as-a-company-picnic that was set up here. Even though it clearly has the trappings of a genuine municipal celebration: official speeches, bake sales, novelty City Council merchandise, a booth where you throw things at the moon and are promised fabulous prizes if you successfully knock it out of the sky.

Carlos and Cecil detour through a popcorn stall on their way to the archery field, and it warms Carlos's heart when Cecil steps up and makes the order. He's missed missed Cecil _wanting_ things, so every time Cecil makes a tentative experiment with having opinions, it's good to see. And even if this too is a front, faking interest can be an important step toward building it up for real. Like with confidence, or psychic powers.

(Carlos does not complain about how Cecil asked for an extra drizzle of glint, even though the stuff makes him break out in a rash. Cecil can eat all the popcorn. Cecil deserves all the popcorn in the world.)

Steve and Delphine saved a couple of good seats in the stands. Since it's Steve, that means there's a lot of hugging. "So good to see you out and about, Cecil! How are you doing? Have you said hi to the girls? ...Gosh, how long has it been since you've _seen_ the girls?"

"Time sure gets away from you sometimes, doesn't it?" says Carlos quickly. He also misses Cecil's good-natured bickering with Steve, but a remark questioning Cecil's devotion to his niece is probably not a good way for that to start.

"I'll say!" Steve's eyes widen. "You haven't seen _Renée_."

"What?" It should only be Janice who notices if Cecil turns into a hermit for months on end. To her, he's an uncle. To Renée, he's just a friend of her dad's....

"My little girl is growing up and I support her right to make her own aesthetic decisions!" exclaims Steve, his face a picture of abject parental misery. "Can I have some of your popcorn?"

From all this, Carlos expects the teenager to have done something unutterably bizarre to herself. What kind of appearance would freak out a parent who already lives in Night Vale? Especially when you already have four eyes?

Then the Scouts take the field (Steve and Cecil quit elbowing each other over the popcorn to applaud), and, oh, it looks like all she's done is shaved off half her hair and dyed the other half neon pink. By Carlos's standards, it's only the third-most-extreme hairstyle on the field.

There's no witch-lore to give you supernatural archery skills, so Janice doesn't stand out from her peers...but the group itself is so keen and deadly with their arrows that they might as well _all_ be magic. When the shooting ends, there's a crowd of parents rendezvousing with their daughters to congratulate them, and Cecil makes straight for Janice. "Hey, _pajarita_ , you were incredible! Practice with your other uncles paying off, huh?"

Janice swoops her cloud-pine branch up through the air so she can hug Cecil at his eye level. "Sure is."

"I brought snacks...but your stepfather ate them all. Want to go swing by the booth where you bring different household objects and heckle the workers if they aren't able to deep-fry them?"

"Not now, I've got people to hang out with," says Janice. "But maybe you could take me to the stylist later...?"

"She's not allowed to dye her hair!" calls Delphine from like twenty feet away.

"Why not?" yells Janice. "Renée did!"

"Renée answers to her father. You answer to me! When I am dead and gone you may turn your hair whatever colors you like, but not before!"

"We'll find something else to do together," says Cecil reassuringly. "You go have fun with your friends, okay?" His voice deepens, suggestive: "Or perhaps...more than friends?"

His niece gives him an affectionate shove. "Tío Cecil!"

"Someone who's a friend, but who you would _like_ to be more? You can tell me!"

Janice looks annoyed, then concerned. "Don't you have enough stuff to put on the show tonight? With the festival, and you could do a retrospective on the history of the war...."

"Hey! I would not put your personal life on the radio!...necessarily."

This is Carlos's cue to speak up in his husband's defense. "Cecil is honestly very good at keeping personal things private!...when you ask him to, and are very specific, and get to him quick enough that he hasn't revealed it already."

Cecil groans. Carlos pulls him into a one-armed hug.

Janice does manage to get away without revealing anything too incriminating. All the girls split up into groups and disperse down the paths of the festival; many of the adults do the same. Cecil and Carlos return to the much-emptier stands, because Mayor Cardinal is giving a speech, and that's something Cecil _does_ need to report on-air.

"That was nice," says Cecil softly.

"Yeah?" asks Carlos, helping himself to some water. This morning, he was worried Cecil would be unnerved and distant around Janice again — maybe enough that Janice would notice, and be upset by him in turn. Now he's just sorry she was too busy, being a teenager with a life of her own, to hang out with her uncle longer.

"Yeah. Family, you know?" Cecil lifts a hand, clasping, like he thinks he can physically pull the appropriate descriptors out of the air. "That's...a good feeling."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

"...and then he smiled!" exclaims Carlos, as he and Kevin spar their way across the rec center mat.

Kevin didn't attend the celebration; too many attendees doing casual blood spells. He asked Carlos how it went, and for once Carlos doesn't want to talk at all about science, he's too busy being hopeful about Cecil.

"And it looked like a real, feeling-it smile, not...you know...."

"Strained, forced rictus of a smile that hurts the cheeks and shows too many teeth?" suggests Kevin. "Or joyless, horribly un-forced smile of someone who has gone beyond pain, beyond caring at all?"

"I was thinking of the first one...and those were incredibly specific descriptions."

"Well, I know what a lot of expressions look like on my face." Kevin nearly jabs Carlos in the stomach before he can catch and redirect the thrust. "So! He had a good time, then?"

"I think so! He fell asleep on the bus afterward, but he wasn't sleepy throughout the day. He's got more energy in general now...called his brother earlier to set up a movie night, instead of just going along with whoever I invite over...and did I mention he's been carving again?"

"You asked if I could help you pick out knives for him, remember?"

"Ah, yes." (Nothing had come of it; Kevin had protested that he didn't know anything about judging knives without near-supernatural cutting powers.) "Well. You should see this alethiometer he's been working on. The detail is amazing."

"I bet! When you're that familiar with something...." Kevin parries a swing from Carlos's staff. "Say, where did the real alethiometer end up? It never got fixed, did it?"

"Unfortunately, no. The pieces are in the National Museum."

Carlos shudders to remember the political and academic firestorm after the world-at-large learned a broken alethiometer had been "discovered." Hispania Nova's government threatened a full diplomatic meltdown if the pieces were sent out of the country, but it hasn't been easy keeping them in, either. The museum has spent extra millions in security, consultants have come in from Oxford and Heidelberg, and Fey has to send them the heads-up about impending heist plots at least once a week.

Maybe Cecil's putting so much effort into this carving because he misses the real one. Maybe their vacation should include a detour. Unlike the two working alethiometers, the broken one is in an exhibit that's open to public view, and yet they've never visited....

Carlos is so busy making travel plans that he misses a block, and gets a hard thwap on the side of the head. The world goes blue.

"Time out!" he yelps — but not fast enough to stop Kevin from knocking his staff out of his grip altogether. "Eye reboot."

"I call that 'leveling the playing field'," teases Kevin.

He's stopped moving, though, and Carlos does his best to do the same. Even closes his eyes for a few seconds, only to be annoyed when, against all his instincts, it doesn't change his view. No matter what, he's suspended in a field of blue.

In a more serious voice, Kevin adds, "Why don't you just go into four-eye?"

White sans-serif text appears in the spot Carlos is 'looking' at, informing him that his system is undamaged. Out loud, he says, "Can't do it. Never learned."

"Really? I learned it when my daemon had only existed for a few weeks, and you've had one your whole life and never picked it up?"

"Yes, good job, I'll make you a medal," gripes Carlos.

A low-res view greyscale view is restored. From the blur he gathers that the end of Kevin's staff is a few inches from his throat. Then comes a dizzying array of other spectra — infrared, microwaves, radio waves, anbaric charge, magnetism — and then a blur of light with no color, a blur of color with no depth, and Carlos knows his system well enough to grab Kevin's staff and yank.

Full vision is restored at the exact second Kevin realizes what just happened and springs at him. Carlos swings; Kevin has to scramble to avoid a blow to the neck. But one good surprise doesn't win a fight — Kevin is good at hand-to-hand, too — Carlos's legs get kicked out from under him, they have a mad tussle over the remaining staff, and then it gets dropped and they're just wrestling, no form or anything, a random tussle

It's ridiculous. It's fun. Carlos is giggling as Kevin gets him pinned face-down on the mat...

...limbs wrapped around his, bodies pressed flush at multiple points, and, uh. This could get awkward.

"Say pasta!" urges Kevin, cheerfully oblivious.

"What? Why?"

"Like in the playground song? Don't you have that here? It's an expression, it means you surrender."

"Never heard it," says Carlos. On top of him, Kevin's legs shift for better balance, and now Carlos is definitely flushed from more than the workout. Oh dear. "Pasta. Let me up."

"I don't think it counts if you don't know what it means."

"Kevin...." (He knows it's Kevin, can hear the voice that is completely unlike Cecil's, feel Kevin's distinctive three-fingered hand gripping one of his biceps. But it feels so much _like_ if Cecil was holding him this tightly...and it's been so long...and Carlos hadn't quite realized how much he missed this.)

"Is there a phrase in your Spanish that means the same thing?"

"We would just say 'I surrender'. Please let me up."

With an adorable laugh, Kevin bends forward so his lips are practically on Carlos's ear, and whispers, "First say you surrender."

Carlos _moans_.

There's an utter mortified silence, broken only by the clanging of someone having a swordfight a few mats down.

"...I'm going to let you up," says Kevin, untangling himself from Carlos as fast as humanly possible. "And I am going to helpfully return your equipment along with my own, so you can leave right away to hit the showers."

"After which we never ever speak of this again?"

"Sounds like a plan!"

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

The rec center famously has ghosts for plumbers. Carlos has never been more grateful to take the coldest shower of his life.

(There's a physics conference in Sydney this week that he passed on attending, and boy, is he regretting it. It's midwinter in the global south. He could've been submerging his entire body in a snowbank right now.)

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

It's not like this is coming out of nowhere.

Carlos has looked up a whole lot of side effects. He can recite the ones for Dark MegaProzac off the top of his head, and "takes your libido out behind the woodshed and shoots it" is one of the most common. This, after Cecil had already spent months with as much interest in sex as he had in anything else — i.e., very little and fading fast.

But Carlos hadn't been worried. Had assumed he could manage his own sex drive singlehandedly (or double-handedly, as needed) for a while. Did not anticipate _completely embarrassing_ himself with one of his friends in the meantime.

"It doesn't mean we have to suggest experimenting with Cecil's meds," says Isaña firmly. "Not yet! Not when he's doing so much better, while all we've had is one _very minor_ case of complete humiliation in front of one of our hot male friends. Not until we've tried...being more proactive in getting out ahead of the situation."

She's right. And Carlos gets good results when he tries being extra-affectionate with Cecil that evening. An extra kiss on the cheek here, a bit of hair-twirling there...it doesn't go farther than snuggling, but having Cecil curl up against him in bed and cover his skin with gentle touches is fulfilling in its own right. 

...he still makes a point of doing some, ah, _self-management_ the morning before movie night. Because the only thing worse than getting obviously sexually flustered by one of his and Cecil's friends would be getting obviously sexually flustered by Cecil's _brother_.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

The feel-good 1980s cartoon cuts to the end credits. Carlos is internally debating whether it's worth taking his hand off Cecil's knee just to clean up their dishes (bowls for the ice cream, plates for the macaroni in fun shark shapes), when Cecil says, "I remember watching that episode. On the couch, back home."

He must be talking about the house he and Emmanuel grew up in, not the one they're in right now. In the next chair over, his brother nods.

"And...you were there? Right?"

"Are you kidding? You were my excuse," says Emmanuel. He's got Neharah with him today, draped over the chair around him like a lacy cape. "Anyone got suspicious of my in-depth knowledge of Ponyville, I could explain I only saw it by accident while babysitting."

"Earl watched a lot of it with us," recalls Cecil. He's staring at a spot on the wall, brow furrowed. "When I was...recovering."

"Sure did."

"His favorite pony was Moondancer. Which one was yours...?"

"I think you mean, which pony was _objectively_ the _best_ ," says Emmanuel, mock-sternly. "No matter what you and your childish fascination with Slenderpony might have thought."

"Uh-huh. Was it Glory?"

Emmanuel's eyebrows jump. "Did you remember that, or just make a good guess?"

"A guess? Sort of? It wasn't a random guess. I do _know_ you."

It's an offhand comment. Cecil isn't even watching the reaction. But Carlos doesn't miss the way Emmanuel lights up.

"I...remember being on the couch a lot," adds Cecil.

His brother sobers. "Yeah."

"There are gaps. In my memory. Not you-gaps, not re-education gaps, just blank spaces." Cecil draws his knees up to his chest, shaking off Carlos's touch. "I remember Mamá taking me for a walk in the abandoned lots. I remember her — picking me up. We must have been at the edge. The rest — Khoshekh remembers the rest better than I do — I remember kicking, I...."

Emmanuel is dead silent. Carlos barely breathes.

"...and then, blanks. I don't know how it ended. I don't know how Khoshekh and me got back to the house. It's like a dream — not a communal broadcast dream, the other kind. Where things skip around. The next thing I remember is being on the couch."

The DVD loops back around to the menu. Carlos puts it on mute.

"You got rolled at least some of the way in a stroller," offers Emmanuel.

"...what?"

"That's the part I remember. I'm in the front room, right, doing a Modified Sumerian worksheet, when I hear the screen door bang open and Josie snapping something out back. Then Ojansi flies in and tells me to go to my room. So I make a show of doing it...pick up my textbook and my tablet —"

"Tablet?" echoes Carlos. He doesn't mean to interrupt, it's just....

"The clay kind," says Emmanuel, and, oh, that makes more sense. Addressing Cecil again: "Pick it up, start walking, then duck around him to the kitchen. Josie gets in front of me and shooes me away for real, but I catch a glimpse of you. Lying in a heap in your old stroller. Well, 'in' is a relative term. You were way too big. Limbs hanging out all over the place."

"I bet," mutters Cecil.

Bigger than a toddler, but still small enough to be picked up and carried by his mother. Carlos thinks of the photos he's seen of Cecil as a child, all unruly dark hair and cherubic cheeks and big bright violet eyes; he thinks of Janice when he first met her, then rounds down a few years. Six. Cecil was six.

"What was it like?" adds Cecil. "For you?"

"Confusing. At first I thought you were sick — that I was being steered away because you were contagious. But Josie was _mad_ , like I'd never...."

"I meant your erokärsimys."

"...oh. That." Emmanuel shrugs. "It was fine."

"I don't remember it."

"You weren't there," says Neharah. "It was during one of the times Mamá took us up North to see the clans. All the fallout was over by the time we got back."

"...that's right." Cecil hugs his knees tighter. "You must have been really old. I remember Neharah being settled, and still having to stay close around you. It must have been a while after they settled. Why such a long wait?"

Emmanuel shrugs. "Eh, you know, doing things the traditional way was never...."

"I want to know why Mamá let you wait!"

Carlos's heart skips a beat. Khoshekh, who a few minutes ago was a boneless heap over the arm of the couch, now has his claws out and digging into the fabric.

Cartoon sparkles wander silently across the TV screen.

"Mamá told us _not_ to separate," says Emmanuel quietly. "At all. So we didn't plan to. Especially since the only erokärsimys we'd ever been close to was yours, and _I_ didn't want to miss a month of school."

"She told you...not...?"

"She knew I would end up going through hard times, and they'd be easier if my daemon and I couldn't lose track of each other." Just like she foresaw hard times for Cecil that would be easier if his own daemon _wasn't_ tethered to his side.

"But you did it anyway," says Cecil.

"Yeah, well...I did a lot of reckless things trying to get accepted by the clans. That particular visit, the state of my daemon felt like just one more thing that made me Not An Acceptable Witch. And we were less than an hour's flight away from the northern dead zone where every other witch did hers. So we snuck out one night and went for it."

Cecil sounds a lot more sympathetic now. "Alone?"

"Alone. Sort of. Neharah met me on the other side."

That's unusual, Carlos knows. Most daemons are so upset by the abandonment that they avoid their humans for days or weeks afterward. Isaña, on the carpet, is curled up half-shut at the very idea.

"You weren't hurt?" asks Khoshekh, ears flattened back against his head.

"By that point, we were just as hell-bent on getting the range as Manny was," explains Neharah. "Physically, sure, it was as stressful as you would expect, but emotionally...all our anger and hurt was directed at the clans, not him. Like you were angry at Mamá, not Cecil."

The margay lifts off the couch (there's a ripping sound as his claws detach) and floats swiftly out of the room, a swirl of spots and tail.

Emmanuel winces. "...wasn't he?"

"I'll go get him," says Cecil, standing and stretching. Now he's just sort of...brisk. Not panicked, but moving like a normal person with normal energy levels, instead of like every limb is an effort to drag around.

"It was hard on us later, though!" says Emmanuel. "Getting stranded in separate universes, that was emotionally stressful! And it was two decades before I managed to arrange a way back, so when you add that all up...."

"...you get a whole lot of stress that could've been avoided if you hadn't gotten the ability to leave each other's sides in the first place." Cecil lets out a hollow laugh. "God, don't you hate it when Mom's right?"

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Evening finds Cecil sitting lotus-position in bed, wooden alethiometer cupped in his hands like a comfort object.

Carlos slides in next to him, shower-scented and wearing only a towel. "Hi, sweetie," he says, kissing Cecil's neck. "It's looking beautiful."

"Mmm."

"Would you ever want to have it painted? Or gilded? It's too late to get it gilded in time for tomorrow, but maybe for the wedding anniversary...."

"I suppose that might help." Cecil drops the carving on the bedside table, between the reading lamp and his charging phone...then says, "Kiss me again."

Carlos does. First on the neck, then on the mouth.

"More," murmurs Cecil against his lips.

He keeps urging Carlos on, and Carlos is only too happy to oblige. They tumble across the mattress on a weird upside-down diagonal, headboard creaking as one of Cecil's feet pushes against it. In the basket next to the bed, Isaña rubs her face up against Khoshekh's: he has the eyepatch off for the night, and she nuzzles the downy-furred cheek underneath.

Carlos, meanwhile, squeezes Cecil's thigh, the flesh even softer and more yielding than he remembers. "More of that," prompts Cecil. "Harder."

"Yes, dear." First, though, Carlos gets a handful of Cecil's weird medieval shift/nightgown/thing. "How about if I get this off of you?"

"How about if you bite me?"

...well, that stings. "You could've just said no."

"Carlos," says Cecil impatiently, fingers clutching Carlos's hair to keep him from backing away. " _Bite_ me."

"Oh!" exclaims Carlos, and nips at Cecil's ear while undoing the laces of the shift, giving himself room to sink his teeth into Cecil's shoulder.

His tongue presses flat against the lines of old claw scars, underlining the quiet thrill Carlos always gets when he puts _wanted_ marks on Cecil's body. Bruises or scratches from an enthusiastic night in...the tan line from his wedding ring, the reddened circle his watch sometimes leaves around Cecil's wrist...and, right now, a ring of tooth prints. And another. Carlos aims for the soft tender skin all around the scars, the better for Cecil to feel it.

They roll around a while longer. Cecil answers the biting with gentle kisses, with murmurs of encouragement, and, eventually, with a lot of breathless panting. His pajamas get hiked up, then all the way off, eventually. Carlos's towel barely needs any tugging to fall out of the way on its own.

...and the whole thing is clearly not as stimulating for Cecil as it might be, no matter how out-of-breath he gets along the way. In the end he stops encouraging Carlos's efforts and starts shushing them. Carlos, trusting Cecil to set his own boundaries, relaxes into postcoital cuddling.

He's awash in tender feelings; he traces a faint scar on Cecil's upper arm like it's the most fascinating thing he's ever felt. Maybe someday Cecil will come around to the matching-tattoo idea, to letting Carlos put something permanent under his skin....

"Khoshekh," says Cecil.

The margay flows up over the side of the mattress and makes a delicate landing, head popping up behind Cecil's. Carlos beams at both faces in turn, wondering if they're in four-eye right now, if Cecil is watching his smile from two angles....

"...touch Khoshekh."

"What?"

One of Cecil's arms is pinned under Carlos's body; he uses the other to pull at the hand stroking his bicep. "Touch Khoshekh. Like you've done before."

It's true, it wouldn't be the first time Carlos has put his bare hands on Cecil's daemon. But it's been years, and it was always in situations of intense stress, when Cecil needed something even more intense to ground him. Right now everything seems so calm.

Carlos sits up on one elbow, gazing down at his husband. "Are you sure...?"

"Please." Cecil's expression is startlingly neutral, his voice steady with conviction. "I want you to."

And Khoshekh does a little roll that presents his fluffy stomach, gazing upside-down into Carlos's eyes.

Stronger beings than Carlos would have a hard time resisting a face like that. He reaches over Cecil to skritch gently under the margay's chin.

Cecil's expression...stays...neutral.

After all the exertion he's just been through, this doesn't even make him catch his breath.

Carlos has done enough research not to panic: not to think this must be some uniquely-horrifying Night Vale illness, or an unprecedented complication of Cecil's forced erokärsimys. This level of non-feeling is a documented (if poorly-studied) symptom of profound depression. But still — to see it in person! — it's like when he and Cecil first met, when he wasn't used to seeing a non-witch with no daemon, when his reaction was still _you're too lucid to be severed, so, oh, god, what **are** you._

He sits up, the better to scoop Khoshekh fully into his arms and cradle the daemon against his bare chest. "Cecil...honey...can't you feel this at all?"

"As if I am wearing a thick coat, and you are touching the outside," says Cecil, still prone on the bed, his voice distant. "Or as if I have to get the sensation through a radio signal, and the transmission is incomplete."

And Khoshekh mutters, "No wonder being bitten didn't help."

Carlos kisses the top of his head, fluffs his marbled fur. Like maybe it'll reach Cecil if he can just cuddle hard enough. "We should look into — doing something new. With your meds."

"It's fine." Cecil places a hand on his chest, like he's checking his pulse, or swearing an oath, or both. "Everything is in order. I'm not hurt. I am feeling...emptiness. As much as I reach out sometimes, it can never be filled. And maybe it _should_ never be filled. Perfectly in order. I'm fine."

"You shouldn't have to settle for that!" It's wonderful that Cecil is up and functioning again, but not that he's been reduced to a near- _zombi_ to get there. "Let me ask Fey what to try next."

Cecil doesn't answer.

"Cecil, please."

"I would like to ask," says Cecil.

Carlos nods. "Okay. Sure, you can do it yourself. You want to phone while I'm at work, and I'll put you on speaker? Or do you want to fly in with me and...."

"No. No, _I_ want to ask."

"And I'm saying, you can...is that not what you meant? I don't understand."

"...it's stupid." Cecil huffs a sigh. "Hardly bears mentioning. Dear Carlos. Put it out of your mind."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Carlos is half-working, half-listening to the radio in the café across the street when there's some kind of commotion down the block. He doesn't see what it is, Cecil reports on loud-and-mysterious noises without identifying them, then the staff are ordering "all customers who value their lives" into the basement shelter.

When they're allowed back upstairs, the weather is just coming to a close. Cecil explains in a strained voice about the dangers of not controlling your jerboa population. Especially if your area is not lucky enough to have one of the rare populations that cannot breathe fire.

Nobody at the station was hurt, he assures the listeners. Not even Intern Aiyana.

But there was...damage. Some of the furniture. One of the walls.

The carved alethiometer, which had been sitting on his desk.

"Listeners," says Cecil shakily, "I am not fine."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

It is, without a doubt, the worst anniversary dinner they've ever had.

Granted, they've only had one wedding anniversary, with the second coming up in October. This is the anniversary they were already celebrating three years before the marriage was legal: the date when they helped save the universe through sheer mutual adoration, and incidentally, the date Carlos first told Cecil he loved him.

By now it's also the anniversary of their proposal. Carlos had been set to pop the question the moment the 2016 election results came in. Cecil shushed him before he could finish the sentence, reminding him about the reservations they had at an expensive restaurant in only two days' time, and what a great place that would be for a person to make romantic plans, and wouldn't it be a shame if his darling boyfriend accidentally pre-empted them?

This year brings them to the same restaurant, but there's nothing romantic about it. Cecil doesn't talk. His eyes are bloodshot, like he's been crying, but he doesn't cry. He didn't bring Khoshekh, so Carlos reads the menu out loud; Cecil struggles to listen, then finally taps Y-E-S in Morse on the tablecloth, at a point Carlos is almost certain was chosen at random.

He orders it anyway, plus one of his own favorites for himself. Doesn't get a chance to enjoy it, because Cecil takes two bites of his own plate and starts tearing up.

They make a strategic retreat to the parking lot, where they sit on the trunk of the car, Carlos looking up at the void and rubbing Cecil's back while Cecil cries into his shoulder. He's so tired. They both need this vacation, and soon, because he's _so_ tired.

Out loud, he says, "Oxford or Heidelberg?"

Cecil brush-taps R-P-T against his leg. Standard procedural sign. _Say that again._

"When we go on vacation, I'm going to take you to one of the alethiometers," says Carlos. "And they're going to let you use it. I don't care if I have to call in every favor and spend every bit of social capital I have in the scientific community, I will make it happen. So: would you rather see the one at the university of Oxford, or Heidelberg?"

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

...and maybe that would've been enough, the promise would have kept them both hanging on until they heard back from Station Management, if it hadn't been for Fashion Week.

The opening day is when everyone in town makes a special point of wearing their hippest, most fashionable ensembles, because everyone will be judging your sense of style for the rest of year. And because the Sphere in particular will devour you if it deems you unworthy. It's the one day when Carlos is happy to let Cecil pick out his clothes.

Last year they wore their wedding ensembles, and Cecil called them "timeless," so Carlos figures they're safe to repeat. He unboxes Cecil's stole, fitted tunic, and garters, setting them out in the walk-in closet before airing out his own traditional New Dane tuxedo. A yawning Cecil is still peeling out of the clothes he slept in while Carlos picks out cufflinks, fastens a miniature bowtie around Isaña's neck, and puts a touch of styling gel in his hair.

He steps outside to survey the window boxes, plucking a couple of the most gorgeous (and least bitey) blooms to make fresh corsages. Ducks into the kitchen for some tape to wrap around the stems.

...and returns to the bedroom just in time to see Cecil stalking out of the closet, wearing nothing but briefs and a single garter.

"Cecil...? Is something wrong?"

"...don't fit..." grunts Cecil, scooping the pants he wore to bed off of the floor. They're faded leather, and not high fashion even by Night Vale standards.

"Say that again? I didn't catch it."

"I don't _fit_ ," repeats Cecil loudly, "in my _tunic_." With a bitter laugh, he hauls the leather pants up his legs. "I got _fat_."

"You're not fat," says Carlos by reflex — then stops and considers. It's not that Cecil was ever skinny, exactly...but Carlos and others keep trying to cheer him up with rich food, if not junk food. And it's not like he's had the energy to exercise for a while. Maybe he is...softer. Rounder. Carrying more weight. "Your tunic doesn't fit?"

"Nope." Cecil buckles the clasp on the pants and reaches for the garish, crumpled Hawai'ian shirt.

"Okay. We can work with that." Carlos heads for the closet. There's junk strewn across the floor; he kicks aside a duckling-print cummerbund, a feather boa, and a pair of clogs made out of sponge. "Let me find you something that's hip, but maybe has a little more give...."

"I'm wearing this. It's comfortable."

"You can't. Don't you remember what day it is?"

"I remember!"

Isaña, at the closet door, tugs on Carlos's attention. He stops rifling through non-fitted tunics and looks out. Cecil pulls the shirt down over his head, the collar tugging on his hair before letting it pop back up in a messy tangle.

He doesn't look defiant, or angry, like he's boldly making a challenge against the Sphere's authority. Nor does he seem distraught or embarrassed about the weight gain. He looks...blank. Unworried.

"Cecil, come on," says Carlos. "Most of the time it doesn't matter what you wear...and, honestly, as long as you're not unhealthy, I don't care if you can never squeeze into that tunic again...but you've gotta make the effort today."

"No! I don't!"

"Cecil —"

"I have been _making the effort_ for heaven knows how long, and what has it gotten me? Long and tiring days. Hollow relationships. The wanton destruction of the one thing I made that I felt good about. The empty promise of a vacation that will supposedly make things better — a vacation that is _never coming_. And I'm sick of it! Enough is enough!"

He laughs — the joyless, horribly un-forced laugh of someone who has gone beyond pain, beyond caring at all.

"It'll be so much easier this way. Don't you see? It'll be easier for you too. You don't have to prop me up anymore! You can let go!"

Carlos grabs his shoulders, thinking about trying to pull the shirt back off, or at least trying to shake the slack manic grin off of Cecil's face, the wild abandon out of his eyes. "Listen to yourself! Like hell I'm going to not 'prop you up' on Fashion Week. This could _kill_ you!"

"I don't _care!_ " Out-of-shape or not, Cecil is still strong enough to heave Carlos away. "I do not care. Let it! If I get ingested by a fashion-conscious Sphere, then that'll just be what happens to me! At least I'll get to wear comfy casual clothes on the way out!"

Carlos's heart drops with fear as he stumbles backward. If he'd had organic eyes, his vision would be blurring. He understands being overwhelmed, he understands not having the strength to do more than the bare minimum to take care of yourself, but this — to give up, to shut down, to trip and fall onto the tracks and then just laugh as the train barrels toward you —

God, he wishes Station Management were human. Or any species that he could realistically challenge to a duel, for its role in shredding Cecil's psyche like this.

"Pick a date," he croaks, following Cecil out of the room. "Tell me when you want to go, honey, and we'll _go_. Whether your bosses have given the okay or not!"

"Why bother?" laughs Cecil. "What's the point of planning? Remember, today might kill me!"

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

.

.

.

.

.

...maybe he passed out or maybe he just lost track of time because everything seems too slow and also too big but there are people in his kitchen. It's like a dream where things have skipped around so he doesn't know how they got here just knows they're trying to talk to him.

"...call Señor Palmero, he's the medical contact," one person is saying. His pilot. That's his pilot, she knows him. He must have been late. Must be really late. Panic attacks can make you late.

"...can't sedate him, there's a flag in his file," says the other person. All in black. Secret Police. Maybe they know him. Maybe not. "Can Palmero give permission for...."

"Don't call Cecil," rasps Carlos. He's on the floor, he realizes, back against a cabinet (he came in here for...breakfast? Did he eat?). His ascot is gone, and maybe a few buttons with it (he couldn't breathe) (can he breathe now? Debatable). "Cecil's in trouble. Call the Mayor, tell her, tell her Cecil's in trouble."


	5. ...Or If I'll Drown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Cecil at his most hopeless, all Carlos can do is lean on his friends, and listen from a distance, and wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter. One more to come after this. Includes canon-typical mental health issues.
> 
> New art: [Cecil & his brother over the years](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Brotherly-Memories-552355613).

The Sphere comes by Carlos's home at half past two. His tux was disheveled by the stress of the morning, and not in an artful way, so he's wearing the outfit that Dana (visiting the house by astral projection) picked out: frilly collar and tiger print and all. It's a nerve-wracking minute, but the Sphere approves...then does the same for Kevin, who cuts a much more dignified figure in a stylish vintage halter dress.

So they've survived. That part is good. It still re-sharpens Carlos's terror for Cecil, which was barely soothed in the first place, and Kevin has to talk him down anew. "Remember what Dana said? Tell me."

"Said she couldn't get special mayoral dispensation to protect any individual from the Sphere," says Carlos, watching out the kitchen window as the fashion-conscious entity descends on his next-door neighbors.

"The other thing, Carlos. The good thing."

Carlos swallows hard and tries to focus on hope. "She said...if Cecil doesn't care at all whether the Sphere deems him fit to live, that's actually protective. Because there is no truer form of hipness than complete apathy to whether or not other entities believe that you are hip enough."

"And what else?" presses Kevin. His painted dog daemon, wearing a crown of flowers that matches her human's outfit, keeps alert eyes on Carlos's face.

"...and that she'll send someone to make sure he gets home."

There aren't many people Carlos would trust to manage this situation, but Dana has wrangled far-more-complicated responses to much bigger threats under even higher pressure. Not to mention, she's a dear friend of Cecil's. The only people in town who care about Cecil more were either part of his family to begin with, or ended up marrying into it.

The Sphere moves out of view; Carlos pries himself away from the window, still far from consoled. "I don't understand. Why is he like this? What went wrong? He didn't spiral like this after Dana went through _her_ separation ordeal, and hers wasn't voluntary. He didn't have an extended breakdown after _yours_ , and you look exactly like him! It shook him up for a few days, but he got better. Why is it only _now_ that he can't get better?"

Kevin doesn't try to answer, just holds Carlos for a while and lets him rail against the unfairness of the universe.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

...and then guides Carlos through the process of looking up inpatient programs.

"Just in case," he reiterates, whenever Carlos starts feeling overwhelmed. "We don't think he's a danger to himself. Not actively. Not right now. We're looking at this just in case."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

They listen together for the start of Cecil's show.

It opens...normally. Cecil reports some average news. Describes the outfits of various locals as they get their fashion reviews. Relates the community calendar (Kevin glows with pride when Cecil mentions the alien invasion he's scheduled to help Tamika defeat). Offers a traffic update.

The station is traditionally the last place the Sphere judges, before moving on to the scrublands and the sand wastes. Sure enough, at last Cecil informs the listeners that the moment is approaching.

 _I tell you now that I...did not prepare for the Sphere. I just wore the same thing I slept in last night._ He sounds so terribly casual. _It's not that I forgot...i-it is that I do not care, and I'm not afraid._

He throws to the weather.

"I do understand why our ordeal didn't get to him like Janice's did," says Va'eira softly, while Kevin rubs Carlos's back in a futile (but appreciated) attempt to loosen some of the knots of tension. "There was no risk that separation would make Kevin feel worse."

Carlos, hunched-over, holds his own daemon close to his chest. For all the comforting things Kevin and Va'eira have said today, they come second to the sheer fact of Kevin's presence, the reminder that a person can go to the place Cecil's in and come back alive.

The weather plays on.

It can last for hours, Carlos reminds himself. They might be in for a long wait. It doesn't mean anything's gone wrong.

Now there's a strange note in the chorus — doesn't seem to be in the same key as the rest of the song, does that mean a freak weather pattern, or —

"Carlos!" hisses Kevin. "Your phone!"

Carlos grabs it, heart thudding against his ribs — the phone keeps spontaneously changing ringtones, that's why he didn't recognize it, but for months it's been using marine mammals for Cecil, and that's definitely a humpback whale song — clumsy fingers nearly send the call to voicemail by accident, but he gets it, he answers. Let it be Cecil. Let it not be someone making a courtesy call on Cecil's behalf. "Cecil?"

"Carlos?" says the sweetest living voice in all the worlds.

Carlos sits up straight, with a vague fiddly gesture at Kevin that's supposed to mean _it's him!_ "Are you okay? Is the Sphere still there, or did it move on?"

"Oh — you've been listening!" realizes Cecil. He sounds self-conscious, almost shy. "The Sphere has gone. Other things have happened too. And I survived. And I — Carlos, I am sorry about this morning — I am...glad, to have lived. I want to keep being alive."

Carlos has to wipe his eyes. Thank the imperfect heavens. "I want you to keep being alive too."

(At the edge of his vision, Kevin clasps his hands in relief.)

"I want to see you," adds Cecil. "I have things to tell you...good things!...and I want to hold your hand, and...is there any way you could leave work early? If not, I have a ride...I could meet you in Desert Bluffs, and —"

"Cecil, I'm not _in_ Desert Bluffs."

"What?"

"I'm at the house. You thought I would — that I could just — that I would _want_ to head off to work, carry on like it's business as usual, after everything you said?"

Bad enough when Carlos had assumed Cecil was just too far gone to care about how his death might affect his loved ones. To hear him talking as if he'd forgotten they would be affected at all...!

"Maybe you weren't afraid for your life, but I was! Cecil — honey — the only reason I didn't follow you downtown is that I was busy having a panic attack in the kitchen."

Cecil's breath hitches. "Carlos — are you —"

"Better now. Dana projected herself over — took care of a few things — sent Kevin to keep me company." (Beside him, Kevin gives a silent little wave.) "He says hi. And Dana promised to send someone for you, too — to make sure you got home safely — did anyone show up yet...?"

"The Mayor's envoy is here," says Cecil solemnly. "She — ah, but we have fifteen seconds until I'm back on the air — and I owe my brother a conversation too, I ought to call him after the show is over. I'll explain a few things on the broadcast, then tell you the rest at home...is that all right...?"

"I'll see you then." Isaña has unrolled by now; Carlos rubs her ears. "I love you. Go ahead and go — I'll be listening."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Back from the weather, still here. The Sphere has moved on.

Listeners, I must apologize for my...outburst, earlier. That was...unprofessional. And probably worrisome for many of you. I was not considering that at all, and I should have. I was not thinking of the people who are important to me. I was not thinking of how I am important to you.

I have been...rather aggressively...reminded, thanks to the guest who has arrived at the station.

The Sphere had just begun to materialize in my booth when my mother's daemon, Bekhorei, let himself in and stood at my side. You may have seen Bekhorei around town. He's a white-feathered bird, very distinctive, in that his wings are arranged straight down his spine like sails, and also in that he is approximately twice the size of a sailboat.

I do not know exactly how the Sphere judged me. Did it take my empty, uncaring heart to be the proof of some transcendent level of hipsterism that most of us can only hope to approach? Or did it gaze into my mother's soul and decide that attempting to devour me in Bekhorei's presence was more than its mysterious existence was worth?

Whatever the case, it moved on. And I laughed, and made some comment to my mother's daemon about the timelessness of community radio.

Bekhorei laughed too. It was not the jovial laughter at the end of a sitcom, when the romantic misunderstanding has been cleared up or the vengeful spirit has been appeased with sacrifice, and the characters joke with each other before the closing credits. No, it was a humorless, uncaring sort of laugh. The kind of laughter from which all the joy has been hollowed out.

"My son," he said. Not to me. Not, perhaps, to anyone at all.

And I understood, then, that the way he sounded to me was in turn the way I must have sounded to you.

Then...well. Then he lifted my chin with a claw as wide as my wrist, and shook me, and said —

"You do not need to be like this! For us, this is all there is. But for you, it does not have to be!"

You will not understand all the nuances of that, listeners. It alludes to matters that must stay between us. Suffice to say that I had not realized, before she said it, how badly I needed to hear it.

We had other words after that — including more words that I needed to hear, as well as words that I needed to say — until we were interrupted by a violent screeching and guttural roaring from the direction of Station Management's office. They sounded more distressed than I have heard in many years. The din grew louder in one abrupt stroke, as if the office door had been flung open — because, of course, the office door _had_ been flung open.

And I was afraid. Afraid that my life might be ended at the very moment I had remembered how to want to live it.

I tried to hide behind Bekhorei, but he seized my kameez in his beak and pulled me over to the window of the booth. So I watched with dread as unknowable, non-Euclidean shapes thrashed in the depths of that office, as puffs of soot and smoke blew forth into the hall, as the tortured syllables of lost languages intermixed with the tortured-animal roaring.

As I was watching, the office spat out a figure.

The figure skidded to a landing on the soot-stained carpet. Stood. Wiped off smears of what looked like blood, or perhaps ichor, on her dress — it was one of those fine, timeless black dresses favored by the witches, which are always judged fashionable.

It was my mother, of course. She turned, and jabbed a warning finger at the still-open door...and Management _howled_ , and that door slammed shut.

Tossing her hair over her shoulder, Mom came down the hall to the recording studio. I saw as she approached that she was carrying a folded set of papers. I met her on the threshold, and she gave the papers to me.

I am holding those same papers now.

You may remember, listeners, that some time ago I put in a request to Station Management for a vacation. You may have noticed that I have taken an unusual number of sick days in recent months. You may have heard me comment, in ways both direct and indirect, that I am weary.

I am holding the approved schedule for a paid six-month sabbatical.

I have not always been the host you deserve lately, Night Vale. I need time to myself, time to heal. And now I have it. I love you, and eventually I will return to your ears, speaking from a place where I can be better for you...and better for me, too.

In the meantime, I hope I will see you around town. When I am not traveling with Carlos, that is.

Good night, Night Vale. And good speed. And good luck.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

There's an unmistakable _fwoosh_ of air on the front lawn when Bekhorei lands, a ghostly white monstrosity in the intermittent glow of streetlights and stars. Khoshekh swirls along beside him, a calligraphic silhouette against the backdrop of feathers.

Carlos heard all the on-air description of being nudged and pulled by the tualapi daemon, but wasn't sure how far to believe it until now, when he sees Cecil astride Bekhorei's neck.

Cecil slides down onto the grass and closes the distance between them in two steps. Before anything else, Carlos insists on looking at him through an electrum spyglass. He doesn't know what active suicidal intentions would look like in the currents of Rusakov particles...and today is not the day he has to find out.

He pulls Cecil into a hug, then cups Cecil's face and rests their foreheads together, more relieved than he has the words for.

"Sabbatical?" he asks, voice cracking.

"Sabbatical," affirms Cecil. He draws the folded papers out of his shoulder bag, holds them flat against his heart. "And more. And — Carlos, I must ask you something. Mom said she tried to come over once, and you sent her away. Was that...did you really...?"

Carlos's face burns. If he'd thought for a minute his mother-in-law could be this helpful, he would have invited her over himself. "I thought you wouldn't want to see her...I thought she'd upset you."

"...and you were not entirely wrong," says Cecil under his breath. "I only ask because...my mother is not, to my knowledge, in the habit of outright lying to me...but I needed to double-check."

He nods to Khoshekh, and the margay rubs his cheek against Bekhorei's. The tualapi's vivid golden eyes, each half as large as Khoshekh's entire head, fall closed with...affection? Probably affection.

"And Kevin...." Cecil moves to clasp Kevin's hand. It's so clear seeing them side-by-side which of them has been working out at the rec center on a regular basis...not to mention, washed his hair more recently...but if the contrast makes Cecil self-conscious, he manages to hold it in check. "Thank you for being Carlos's friend. I never meant to...I wasn't thinking of how he...thank you."

Va'eira trots over to Khoshekh, doggy nails clicking on the stone of the front walk, and says something low into his ear. Carlos doesn't hear what it is, just sees as Khoshekh nods.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Hard as it is to trust, the flicker of hope lingers on into the night.

When Carlos suggests they order in for dinner, Cecil confesses that he is craving Big Rico's...but that the foods he craves have not provided as much comfort as his instincts would suggest, and perhaps he will feel better in the long run if he eats something with vegetables. Which works out beautifully, because Kevin made stir-fry for lunch. Cecil heats up enough leftovers for both of them.

Enough weight has been lifted from his heart, he assures Carlos, that he has the will and the strength to do his own bathing. Still, Carlos holds on to him and can't seem to let go, or to stop shivering. So Cecil asks if he would like to sit in, and ends up doing most of his scrubbing one-handed, because Carlos is holding the other.

"I would prefer to see the alethiometer in Oxford," he says, during the short time when both hands are free so he can lather up his hair. "Dr. Belacqua's Oxford. I still haven't been. And...I would like to go as soon as possible. Although I understand...you have a conference coming up in just two weeks, and you usually have a rush of last-minute preparation...."

"I can delegate...but not overnight," says Carlos. When he promised they could leave on a date of Cecil's choosing, he'd been assuming they would have a little prep time first. "Can you give me, ah, three days? That'll be enough time to put things in order at the office. Figure out which parts of the workload get awarded to which promising young interns."

"Three days," echoes Cecil. He sounds...not uncertain, exactly, but like he has to be cautious about how much he promises. "I can...yes. I can be okay for that long."

They carry the conversation out into the living room, windows open to the July night. Cecil's hair is silvery in the moonlight. A soft breeze blows in the scent of the garden.

"Can you still be okay if something comes up?" asks Carlos, leaning on the back of the couch. "I mean, not something like 'oh, wow, we just figured out this other universe has a completely new variety of rock', but a scientific emergency. The kind I wouldn't be able to delegate."

No answer.

"Because if there's any chance...any at all...that you would be better off, that you would be _safer_ , in a more, um, professional care setting...."

Cecil's face crumples. "Don't you think I've thought about that? But Carlos, you know I've _tried_ it — or rather, had it tried _on_ me, as I was a minor at the time — and the distress came back eventually. Along with a profound sense of betrayal. All while a lot of good things were erased in the process, and many of those are still lost...."

"I don't mean re-education!" exclaims Carlos. "I meant one of the treatment centers in Desert Bluffs. Which has a thriving market for them. Outside the jurisdiction of the Night Vale authorities, but close enough that they wouldn't have too much...culture shock...to handle a patient from around here. Kevin helped me look at some good ones. He, um, knows a lot of patients, so he has an inside track."

Once Cecil understands what Carlos is really asking, he gives it some thought. Real, serious thought.

It hurts Carlos's heart that he has to...but it's a relief, in a way, that he isn't brushing it off. If he had, Carlos wouldn't have been sure whether he felt too secure to need it, or too hopeless to bother.

"I would like to hold the alethiometer," says Cecil at last. His voice is so small, a secret-police officer hiding right outside their window might have missed it. "To ask it questions, and not only about medication. You cannot imagine how much I...Carlos, if you are called away, I would prefer to go to Brytain on my own, and let you catch up when you can. I believe the reading will be more therapeutic than contact with any professional. No matter how talented."

"You've missed it, huh," says Carlos.

Cecil palms his forehead, eyes fluttering closed. "It is as if I have been walking around with a sense muffled. Or a limb forcibly bound."

"I wish you had said something earlier. I mean, years earlier." Granted, a few years ago Carlos wouldn't have been so confident with his offer — just because he had come back from the dead, saved the world, and faced down the wrath of a god didn't mean he wasn't still intimidated by the alethiometrist councils — but he could have tried. "I kept offering you Fey...I didn't realize...."

A dispirited shrug. Maybe Cecil didn't realize either.

"Would you rather go even earlier?" The idea makes Carlos's hands shake: not just letting Cecil out of his sight again, but sending Cecil beyond the reach of everyone else Carlos would trust to protect him. He asks anyway. "We can put you on the first flight tomorrow, if you're up for it."

"We really can, can't we?" Cecil raises his face, a touch of wonder in his voice. Carlos hangs on to every syllable. "It's really happened. I'm on _vacation_. I can go whenever I want."

On the rug near his feet, Khoshekh starts purring.

"...but I have not made any travel plans," adds Cecil. "It's been so long since I could bear to visit the websites for tourist attractions in Oxford or Oslo...since I could even look at images of the magnificent architecture of Brytain, or the exotic upside-down forests of Norway, without an upwelling of despair and the beginnings of tears. So, now...now that everything is different...I should do that. I _want_ to do that."

He touches Carlos's arm.

"And it will take a little time. Perhaps three days."

At long last, something Carlos can promise without reservation. "I'll book the flights tonight."

(He can wait until later to tell Cecil they're not going to any country called "Norway.")

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

They end up taking four days. Carlos can't get a doctor's appointment any faster, and Cecil says he'll be okay with pushing things back a little, if it's for the sake of making sure Carlos isn't likely to drop from a stress-induced heart attack in the middle of High Street.

Cecil spends a lot of his new free time sleeping, but when he's up, he's in tentative motion: going for walks, trying simple recipes, soliciting his Facebook friends for European gift requests. In the mornings he sends Carlos off to work with a kiss goodbye. In the evenings he talks about the latest tourism plans he's been working on, while Carlos half-listens, half-relaxes into the sensation of Cecil playing with his hair and massaging his scalp.

On their final night in town, Carlos comes home to find Cecil, Emmanuel, and Janice gathered shoulder-to-shoulder around Cecil's laptop. The screen shows a desolate frozen wasteland; the Palmeros are radiating warmth and care. Emmanuel points out some familiar feature, Janice laments that she wants to visit too, and Cecil tells her, _next time_.

At last Carlos returns from the bowling alley with a clean bill of health. Blood pressure higher than the doctor would like, but as long as he limits his sodium and asbestos intake, he's told he should be fine.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Evening finds them at the Night Vale aerodock, surrendering their suitcases to the baggage wraith and reciting the lists of everyone they've ever kissed for the security scan.

The waiting area is empty except for Carlos and Cecil: carry-ons at their feet, daemons in their laps. Khoshekh sits up on his back legs, leaning on Cecil's chest so he can stretch his long body and neck up towards Carlos's face:

"When we were young, after it happened...."

Cecil gives the margay a cautionary squeeze.

"I will _tell_ him," says Khoshekh, voice deep and terse. To Carlos: "After it happened, I felt utterly alone. Despondent. Hollow. Cecil and I were carried back to the house together; we were placed right beside each other on the couch; but I could not bear to reach out to him. I felt...unworthy of the comfort, much as I needed it. And I learned later that he was unable to reach back because he felt the same."

"You _are_ worthy," says Carlos softly. "It wasn't your fault. Neither of you could have stopped it. You were a _child_."

Khoshekh nods. "But we are not a child now. So when those feelings reoccur in the present, it is not easy to escape from them. Which is why...Carlos, you don't know how much it means, that you've been here for us. When we cannot bring ourselves to ask for help, it is never because you have made us feel ashamed to need it — or made empty promises, so that we are afraid to trust — or given us any reason to doubt, for a moment, that you love us. It has been hard, sometimes, for us to remember and appreciate the good things in our life...but that is what you are. A good thing. The best in our world."

At a loss for words, Carlos puts an arm around Cecil's shoulder, rubbing small circles in the fabric of Cecil's tunic with his thumb. He isn't doing this for the praise, but he's only human, and it helps to hear.

A disembodied voice announces that their flight is ready to board. Cecil lets go of his daemon, Carlos lets go of Cecil, and they gather their bags. As they approach the gate, Cecil speaks up. "Carlos...."

"Yes?"

" _Have_ you found any universes with a completely new variety of rock lately?"

"Um," says Carlos. "Yes, actually."

"Tell me about it?"

"It's _fascinating_." Even with everything that's happened, enthusiasm lifts Carlos's voice as he warms to his subject. "We have these contacts who come from a planet with completely foreign geologic processes. You should have seen their faces when we explained how volcanoes work! And then they started describing their own, it was the wildest thing, two of our petrographers almost got into a fistfight over whether one of their descriptive terms should be mapped to a subset of _metamorphic rocks_ or treated as a new term entirely...."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

_Oxford, Brytain._

The long-established alethiometrists at the university treat Carlos with a wary, conditional respect. Their students, in contrast, are almost more deferential to their famous guest than to their teachers. And they're in outright awe of Cecil, recognizing him from the footage Carlos provided of him reading another alethiometer, on film specially developed to show the blinding swirl of Rusakov particles around the golden frame.

They have conditions; they have demands. Cecil will be allowed an hour for this session, with the option of more later as long as it goes well. He's not allowed to touch the device unless he's wearing gloves. He will do his reading in the Atal observation room, one of the first in the world, where the Oxford alethiometrists can study him from the next room over through a window of treated electrum panes.

"I will fight them on that last one if you want," says Carlos. "Buy them off with the promise that you'll answer some extra questions for them. Or, if you'd rather keep things simple, buy them off with money."

"It's all right." Cecil pulls on the thin cotton gloves. "I don't mind letting them watch. As long as you are watching alongside them."

It's a tight fit. The space is designed for four or five observers, not what looks like the entire department. Carlos presses himself into a corner at the front of the room, remembering those simpler days when his whole team, all of them brand-new to Night Vale and none of them dead or turned into trees yet, crammed into Cecil's office to watch him turn a similar set of dials.

A golden cloud of Dust swirls around Cecil as he enters the opposite room, Khoshekh at his heels and an acid-free storage box in his arms. It's not the record-setting brilliance Carlos has seen from him in the past, but the currents are driven by a shaky thread of hope, backed up with a whole lot of fight.

Cecil musters up a smile and waves at his observers, before setting the box on the plain plastic desk and taking out the Oxford alethiometer.

Carlos surreptitiously triggers the zoom function on his eyes — then a polarizing filter, which makes it easier to see past the Dust — to get a better look. Its chassis is duller and more scratched than the one he knew, marked with the souvenirs of a journey in the hands of a determined twelve-year-old through continents, worlds, and Wars. But it fits into Cecil's hands in just the same way, and his hands are swift and sure on the dials, as if they've never left.

He answers a handful of questions for the alethiometrists with easy authority, then moves on, silently, to ask his own. In the space of five minutes, the flow of hope around him gets steadier. In ten, his whole posture has relaxed. There's a single moment with a pulse of happiness that brightens his whole aura, and after that Carlos loses all track of time, knowing that on this side of the window he himself must be glowing with more contentment than he's felt in months.

At last Cecil sets the alethiometer back in its box. He's still enveloped in currents of struggle, but they're calmer now, and this time it's not because he's dimmed in general with the fading of his will to live. "May I come back tomorrow?"

Carlos is startled to realize they've run fifteen minutes long. Not only that, the department heads practically trip over each other in the rush to promise that yes, Cecil is welcome to return.

"I bet they would've let you stay all night, if you wanted," says Carlos as they head outside, a little jealous but mostly proud. Of course they would appreciate his Cecil. His talented, brave, brilliant, slowly-healing Cecil.

"I did consider it," admits Cecil. "Some of them wanted me to. But I think perhaps I should pace myself. Besides...the Botanic Garden closes in an hour, and I would like to walk there with you, and take a look at the statue you bought them."


	6. A Sudden Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An epilogue. Friends and loved ones spend time together. Cecil, Carlos, and others work on figuring out how to be okay again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More art: [teenage Cecil with Leonard](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Alethiometry-Apprentice-553578505) learning alethiometry; [Kevin with Va'eira](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Painted-Dog-Daemon-555446712); a [wedding night pinup](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Palmero-Ramirez-Wedding-Night-553320277). And don't miss [this professional tarantula in scrubs](http://alephandmutt.tumblr.com/post/127557438979/theres-no-limit-to-what-they-can-be-support).
> 
> This fic also has [a companion mix](http://ptahrrific.dreamwidth.org/244191.html). (The chapter titles are all song lyrics; those songs are all included.)

There's an unexpected party at the Desert Flower this afternoon. At least they're mostly on the Bowling side. Tamika wasn't looking to hang out with a crowd; she only came by to kick back for a while and play Space Invaders. (The game is connected by time-traveling signal to a genuine battlefront in the Blood Space War, and her side is/was/will have been always looking for teenage strategists.)

She and Rashi are making their way to the Arcade Fun Complex side when Kevin's daemon spots them and comes trotting over, doggy nails clicking on the tile. "Hi, Tamika. Come sit with us for a while? Cecil keeps dropping hints about how much better his new meds are for his sex life, and he'll knock it off if there's a teenager in earshot."

"Yeah, all right." It's not like Tamika is uncomfortable with adult content — she never would've made it through the Complete Dr. Seuss if she was — but Palmero doesn't need to know that.

(He also doesn't need to know why Kevin considers the declawing of his sex drive a feature, not a bug. Doesn't need to know about every crossed wire that Strexcorp left in Kevin's brain, or all the reasons why he still avoids red meat and fresh injuries. Some stuff is personal, all right?)

Turns out there's a disproportionate amount of Palmeros crowding up the lanes: Emmanuel giving Cecil a hard time, Cecil laughing it off, and their mom lurking with some wizards a couple lanes down. Tamika greets Kevin with a high-five once she's close enough to his body, and waves to the other bowlers. "Somebody having an occasion, here?"

Emmanuel raises his hand. "Birthday. It's somewhere around now, anyway. Nobody remembers the exact date, but I'm definitely a Sagittarius."

"He quit getting any older years ago, and he's still making us take him out for cake and presents," puts in Cecil. "Big scam, if you ask me. Okay, everyone back up and let me roll, I've got a good feeling about this frame."

Everyone at this lane — Kevin, Emmanuel, Steve Carlsberg, and Delphine Cabrera — backs up. Cecil's got a point about the age thing. They're all around the same generation — Tamika knows for a fact that Carlsberg and Emmanuel once survived the same Summer Reading Program — but if you didn't know Emmanuel was a wizard, you'd guess he was Tamika's big brother before pegging him as Cecil's.

"How old are you really?" asks Tamika. "We could start calling you Old Man Emmanuel, if that'll help."

"Hey, I'm only forty-six...ish. Hold off on the nicknames until I'm at least fif...." He glances at Cabrera and Carlsberg, and changes direction. "...sixty. Ish."

"Nice save, darling," says Delphine, before Cecil shushes them so he can concentrate.

Tamika takes a minute to size up Cecil while he aims down the lane. She'd heard from Janice and others that the Voice was doing better, but this is the first time she's seen it for herself since his on-air breakdown a couple months back. And yeah, he looks pretty good...for a normal human...considering his age...and life experience...and so on. The lines on his face mostly stand out when he's smiling. His outfit is on point (Tamika's gotta look for tights like that in her size). Is that a new tattoo on his wrist? Whatever it is, he's making it work.

Aim is on point too: he rolls a strike. Tamika and Kevin clap, and Carlsberg pulls Cecil into a celebratory bear hug, as the last of the pins clatter to the floor.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

Mayoral duties make Dana fashionably late to the party. Most of the guests she knows are in the dining area when she arrives, getting some kind of slideshow on Cecil's phone while Khoshekh hangs draped over his shoulder. Cecil flicks through a couple of photograms with an increasingly puzzled face: "These aren't from Mom's clan's ancestral lake. Or any of the other lakes we passed by. Um. These appear to be from a vacation I have not taken yet. Maybe we shouldn't look."

"I used to get those all the time when I was at the basalt fortress," offers Dana. "It never gave me any problems with causality. Can I see?"

Emmanuel _is_ worried about causality, and Delphine mutters something about having seen these already. That leaves Steve, Kevin, and Dana to squeeze in around the table for the next part of the slideshow.

"I'm guessing these are in the south of France," decides Cecil, "going by the climate, the quality of rocks on the beach, and the judgmental treelike figures that loom along the horizon."

"Also, the fact that you have hotel rooms booked in the south of France for next week," points out Dana.

She had been worried, at first, that it would be impossible to keep up with Cecil once he was off the air. He had all but stopped posting things online, and if he was traveling a lot he might find it hard to stay in touch. Turns out, her fears were unfounded: as Cecil's enthusiasm for life has returned, so has his enthusiasm for things like "telling everyone about vacation plans." And there's no Station Management on Facebook limiting how much personal detail he's allowed to share.

"Well, that would be a factor, yes," says Cecil now. "But I like to think my highly-developed powers of scientific reasoning —"

He breaks off, not confused this time, but flustered. The photo he just flipped to is a shot of Carlos, bare-chested, giving the camera a seductive smile and twirling his fingers through his hair.

"There's a highly-developed scientific _something_ here, all right," says Dana approvingly, while Kevin gives the photo an aww, and Steve a wolf-whistle.

Cecil clutches the phone to his chest, blushing, while Khoshekh murmurs, "Perhaps we should have reviewed the entire set before sharing."

"Where is Carlos, anyway?" asks Kevin. His painted dog daemon looks around the Desert Flower, double-checking that the scientist isn't here yet. "I thought the whole Night Vale Harbor Clan Auxiliary Squad was invited."

"Surprise situation at the aerodock," says Cecil. "There was some kind of snarl at customs — I hope it's not Erikas again! — and he got called in to smooth things over. If he has time afterward, he'll join us here."

Dana quietly goes into four-eye. Unlike Cecil and Kevin, who need their daemons by their sides to see a digital screen, she has no accessibility problems while Eustathias goes traveling at a distance. Right now the phoenix daemon is outside, catching the thermals hundreds of feet above the parking lots. Sharing Dana's senses, she surveys the ground for Carlos.

He's not far at all. Getting off the bus this very moment, a little ways down the block.

If Cecil seemed anxious or despondent, as he has been all too often in recent months, Dana would reassure him that his husband is close at hand. It would be cruel to put him through any more uncertainty than necessary. But today, Cecil is...comfortable. Satisfied — no, _happy_ — at the company he is in now.

So Dana keeps her pleasant surprise to herself, sits back, and prepares to enjoy the look on Cecil's face.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

"Sometimes people think he's _my_ brother," says Janice, across from Tamika at the telekinesis-only pinball game. "Sometimes I correct them, especially when it's Father-Daughter Night at the opera house or the cult compound, but sometimes I let them continue on in their misapprehension. I'm still not sure which is ruder."

"Don't think the library has an etiquette book that covers that one," admits Tamika. "I can double-check if you want."

"It's okay, I'll go through the shelves myself." Janice sighs. "At least Tío Cecil doesn't have to worry about it...people know about him from his show, so they know he isn't a dad, and what to expect from his brother. And it's gonna be a long time before Renée and I have to worry about people thinking she's my mom."

Sometimes Tamika envies the young witch. How cool must it be to have the next thousand-odd years of history, culture, and books to look forward to? Then she thinks about all the people Janice is gonna lose — about how they nearly lost her uncle already, and had that nightmare period a few years earlier when they all figured her stepsister couldn't be saved — and, you know what, maybe a normal human lifespan is all Tamika wants to manage.

"Oh, speaking of Renée!" exclaims Janice. "She settled! Have you seen?"

Tamika hasn't — so she follows while Janice's cloud-pine branch swoops through the aisles of games, until they find her stepsister tearing it up at single-person DDR. Renée's killer pink hair clashes with the daemon on her shoulder, but it looks like she's keeping it anyway. Cool.

"Hey there, God-Destroyer," she says, when the song finishes and the machine starts frantically spitting out prize tickets. "You want a match? I can't get any good competition these days! Not since Tehom settled as an animal too small to hit all the arrows."

"You're on," says Tamika warmly, taking the next free platform.

Rashi finds a spot where he can squeeze up next to the machines without blocking too much of any aisle. Renée's daemon, Tovitthae, hops down to her wrist; she holds this out to the buffalo, so the two daemons can greet each other without Tovi getting too far from his human.

Thanks to a war injury, their range is as stunted as Janice's is broad. Can't get more than a foot away from each other without pain. But the daemon that hovers in front of Rashi's face is a ruby-throated hummingbird, and the symbolism couldn't be better: their scars and their limits haven't stopped him from being able to fly.

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

The kerfuffle at the aerodock doesn't take Carlos long at all. He went because Sherie the physicist (Night Vale team, fall 2013, senior member) asked him to make sure things were okay, but he's pretty sure Seth would've had it under control. The kid lived in town during the War, after all, and comes back to visit his mom and sister almost every time US schools go on vacation. He's weathered plenty of ordeals more challenging than an extended Night Vale security screening.

So Carlos shows up at the Desert Flower only an hour late.

In the tableau of the bowling alley, the first thing he sees is Bekhorei: sitting matter-of-factly down the center of Lane 3, filling it from gutter to gutter. Other patrons have politely (in any other town, Carlos would think _nervously_ ) given Lanes 2 and 4 a wide berth. It's still instinctively uncomfortable to see a large daemon in such a crowded space...even when Carlos has been assured that Bekhorei is numb to the touches of strangers.

("Always was," said Emmanuel, when Carlos brought it up after Oxford, over wine. "I've got a theory that it's why he settled so big in the first place. You couldn't hurt her that way, and she was really, coldly aggressive about wanting people to know it."

"Some still found out the hard way," added Cecil. "Remember that coach who picked on me in fifth grade? Speedy little lizard daemon. He put her in his pocket, figured that made him untouchable by some angry parental daemon. Bekhorei snapped his arm."

Emmanuel was the first to notice the face Carlos was making. "Also, when we were little, he used to give us rides! I don't want to make him sound like a monster. He's not a monster. He's just...Mom.")

Bekhorei notices Carlos noticing him, and nods a giant feathery head in the direction of the dining area. With a hat-tipping gesture of acknowledgment/gratitude, Carlos follows the direction. Cecil glows with a smile when Carlos comes into view, and Dana is already moving aside to let Carlos sit next to his husband, as if she'd been expecting him to show up at this exact moment.

"You missed all the bowling," Cecil informs him, squeezing Carlos's hand. There's a new set of markings around his wrist, a design inked in definitely-not-an-illegal-Sharpie. "But not all the fun! We haven't even started the recreational yelling-at-the-moon yet."

"Who does it think it is, anyway?" mutters Dana under her breath.

"So, how are you? How was work?"

Work was...uplifting. One of the governments in Kevin's home universe has finally approved a team to liaise with the International Science Foundation. Only the biology department so far, but Carlos is sure that it'll represent them well, especially since it's headed by Omero the xenobiologist (alum of the Night Vale team, fall 2013). On the rare occasions when Omero isn't sure what to do, an angel generally descends in a pillar of light and offers him extra guidance, in return for playing a few rounds of Resident Portal Effect VI.

"So you might actually get a working ISF branch there soon?" asks Kevin, sounding surprised.

"Could be as early as next year, if all the stars line up right," says Carlos proudly. "I know you have a few more years before you have to worry about leaving town...but let me know, any time, when you decide what kind of position you'd want us to hire you for."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

The yelling-at-the-moon plan gets pre-empted by the weather. Thick dark clouds gather in front of the sky, and some kind of anbaromagnetic phenomenon makes sparkling ribbons of color in front of the clouds.

Nearly everyone with the power of the flight makes use of it, soaring off into the night to get a closer look. Janice and Emmanuel, Sohvi and Josie, even Dana and her phoenix daemon: fiery wings sometimes standing out against the mysterious lights, sometimes blending in. Bekhorei's huge white wings are a vibrant canvas, painted by the sky.

Everyone else strolls to a nearby park and settles in to watch.

Carlos is still talking about science stuff. Tamika doesn't pay attention to most of it. There's this part about a universe where the cosmological models predict a whole bunch of unaccounted-for, unseen, mysterious light, which sounds like something she might want to know about...then Carlos explains that they already got Fey to do some calculations, and it's definitely not an evil or terrible light. So Tamika tunes the rest out, and puts a comfortable distance between them before settling down.

Someone quiet and unobtrusive takes a seat in the grass next to her.

"Hey there," says Tamika under her breath, leaning against Rashi. "It's been a while."

"Would you rather see me more often?" asks Kevin's death, with mild curiosity. "I haven't gone anywhere far."

"Eh, this is fine." Tamika casts a glance at Kevin and Va'eira, over on the other side of Cecil and his chatty scientist. "He knows you're around, right?"

"He is the one who keeps me where I am," points out the genderless, colorless, nearly-featureless figure. "For the moment: not at his heels, but not too far."

Tamika can't even guess where her own death would be, if it was corporeal. But if you grow up with them walking around, you probably get a better sense for this kind of thing. "You know some of his friends are thinking up a whole life for him," she tell Kevin's. "They figure as soon as he can't live here anymore, he'll move back to his own universe and pick up from there."

"Yes."

"Guess he's still got other plans."

The death's quiet presence is answer enough.

Maybe Tamika should feel like she did when she heard about Palmero — wanting someone to run to the rescue, to shake Kevin out of it. But it doesn't feel like something's been knocked off-kilter in Kevin's head, or like he's too deep in a hole to make clear-eyed decisions. If anything, this reminds her of when her abuelo got terminal wing cancer. Everyone knew his life was on a timer, and sometimes that was hard to deal with...but he was kinda at peace with it, and made the most out of those last few years. At the end, even if maybe not everyone was ready for him to leave, he was ready to go.

So she makes a point of swinging by Kevin before she heads off home. "You know I got your back, right?" she says under her breath. "Whatever you decide. Even if nobody else likes it...even if maybe _I_ don't like it...I got your back."

Va'eira rubs her face up against Rashi's massive chin, while Kevin smiles in Tamika's general direction. His dark glasses sparkle with reflected rainbows. "Whatever I decide, I'm really lucky...and really glad...to have a friend like you."

 

,,,^o_ø^,,,~

 

People trickle off home in twos and threes, until Cecil and Carlos are the last two left in the park: legs stretched out in the cool grass, daemons curled around each other, watching the sky.

Carlos rubs his thumb against the base of Cecil's wrist. In the low light he can't see the Sharpie marks anymore, and he hasn't bothered to adjust the settings on his eyes; he's just remembering where the ink was. It's the latest field-test of a tattoo pattern: based loosely on the chemical diagram Carlos came up with a while back, interwoven with a motif adapted from the Night Vale city crest, and some zigzag lines that Cecil insists are an accurate representation of radio waves.

"I like this one," says Cecil quietly. "I might want to keep it. If you like it on me."

"I like everything on you," says Carlos, without having to think about it.

Cecil shakes out of his grip and swings one leg around, so all of a sudden he's straddling Carlos's lap.

Carlos does a double-take, then toggles the menu on his eyes and switches to night-vision mode, letting him see Cecil's expression instead of a blur of shadows. "Honey...?"

"I understand." Cecil's voice is velvety and low. "I do. You're just grateful to have me alive. Next to that, any other question pales in importance. How can it be significant what I put on my skin? As long as there is a pulse underneath, it will make you happy."

A lump rises in Carlos's throat. "Well...yeah," he says, looping his arms around Cecil's waist and resting his forehead against Cecil's chest. Feeling that blessed heartbeat under the light weave of Cecil's patterned poncho.

Cecil embraces him in return, kissing the crown of Carlos's head through the mass of silvering curls. "I know the feeling. I have felt it for you, those times I got you back after fearing I would never see you again. It makes things seem so simple...but my dear Carlos, it will not last. In time, some of the things I do will begin to annoy you again. Others, you'll feel neglected and upset if I let them slide. Your happiness will go back to being something I have to work for."

To be honest, Carlos has already been annoyed by Cecil a couple of times recently. But they're so minor. Not worth mentioning. "I don't _want_ to lose so much perspective that I get bothered about insignificant little things. I don't want to be that petty."

"Not petty," intones Cecil. "Human. And important. Part of the way we give our short and finite lives meaning is by _making_ the little things significant. So help me make this meaningful, Carlos. I do like this design, but I don't want it if you're not interested — or, worse, if you think it's ugly or off-putting, and would only tolerate it because it was on me. I want a design that will bring both of us joy, even ten or twenty or fifty years down the road. Can you tell me, honestly, that this one rates?"

Carlos lifts his head, though he keeps his hands folded against the small of Cecil's back. "Can I see it again?"

Cecil shows him the affected wrist...and they both laugh, because all Carlos's affectionate touching has reduced half the lines to smudges.

"I do remember liking it," says Carlos sheepishly. "But you're right, I don't want to be flip or casual about this. You have all the designs at the house, right? Let me look at it again there, and I'll think about it seriously and tell you how I feel."

"Thank you," murmurs Cecil, and kisses him. First on the cheek, right above his scar, then on the mouth.

Carlos parts his lips and returns the kiss. In full view of the trees and everything — they'll be gossiping about it in the Whispering Forest by tomorrow.

They're on the verge of tumbling backward onto the grass when the clouds finally scud out of the way, and Cecil grumbles about the creepy and unnecessary pale voyeur all the way back to the house. Carlos doesn't join in, just nods and hums in non-disagreement until they can fall properly into bed. The sheets are softer than the ground anyway; they won't get grass stains on Carlos's lab coat or Cecil's fancy tights; and Cecil can fall asleep right afterward without risking a secret-police citation for being unlawfully adorable in public.

It isn't scientific at all to think that a rocky satellite hundreds of thousands of miles away would know or care what anyone down here is doing. Still, before Carlos drifts off too, he takes a minute to thank the moon for sending them home.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't miss [the series masterpost](http://ptahrrific.dreamwidth.org/205307.html#contents) for backstory, illustrations, a daemon reference list, and more.
> 
> In [the first drawing I ever did of Renée](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/art/Various-Night-Vale-Daemons-431158146), her daemon was a hummingbird. Had no idea what accurate foreshadowing that would be.
> 
> You can also find me on [Dreamwidth](http://sailorptah.dreamwidth.org/), [Deviantart](http://erinptah.deviantart.com/), [Tumblr](http://bicatperson.tumblr.com/).
> 
> A lot of feelings went into the writing of this fic. Thanks again to all of you who have shared your feelings back.


End file.
